Franklin Historical Society (Messier Log Cabin)

During settlement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, thousands of one-and two-room log houses were built throughout Vermont. Settlement began in the town of Franklin in the early nineteenth century. Because the area's relatively flat topography lacked good sites for sawmills, log construction remained in use longer than elsewhere, for economic as much as technological reasons, much as in Grand Isle County. In 1877, Charles P. and Sophia Burnor Messier crossed the border from Canada and purchased twenty-three acres on the Highgate road in Franklin, building this small, gabled, 15 × 25–foot two-room log cabin, with half-dovetail corners. The Messiers resided here into the twentieth century, and after their deaths the acreage was absorbed by an adjacent farm. The Franklin Historical Society purchased the cabin in 1963, moved it to Franklin village and then moved it again, to this site, where the cabin is open by appointment.