Haywood English Home Big Holly Cabin

This heart pine cabin is one of the few remaining examples of a single-pen (room) cabin built when this was the Georgia mountain frontier. The hand-hewn logs are joined with full-dovetail corner notching and the logs are chinked on the interior with wooden battens. This type of cabin was once plentiful but, as with the existing structure, they usually evolved into double-pen cabins or larger houses with frame additions. Haywood English built a log house on unclaimed Land Lot 85, District 11, bordering Sutton's Mill Creek (now Sutton Mill Creek). In 1841, James R. Wyly the fourth deed holder of Land Lot 85, belatedly laid claim to it. In a series of legal actions, which eventually ended in the Georgia Supreme Court, English lost his plea of "sitters rights," and moved to Land Lots 4 and 5, District 10. Family legend contends that this is the same log house built on Land Lot 85 in 1820 and was relocated in 1849 following the Supreme Court's decision. The cabin was restored by a descendant of the English family in 1986-87 and was later moved to this location.