JAMES DRANE LOG HOUSE

Built by the area’s first permanent settler, this log house is likely the oldest standing structure in Garrett County and is emblematic of western Maryland’s pioneering era. As a frontier cabin, it was erected when the rutted Braddock Road built in 1755 to facilitate military maneuvers was the only overland route. The town of Accident was surveyed for Lord Baltimore in 1774, yet the area remained largely unsettled until the 1840s influx of Germans. Easily and quickly erected from indigenous materials, log dwellings comprised most of the housing in this region prior to the mid-nineteenth century. Drane’s house is constructed of hewn logs held by V-notch joints combined with later heavy timber framing. Also common was its two-room, hall-parlor plan, to which was later appended a separate kitchen and stone end chimney. Drane was a farmer from Prince George’s County who attempted to introduce tobacco culture to the area, purchasing the property from his brother-in-law, Colonel William Lamar, in 1798. The house was purchased by the Town of Accident in 1987 as a landmark in the early history of western Maryland, restored, and, beginning in 1994, opened by appointment. James and his wife Pricilla are buried in the adjacent cemetery.