Preserve Old Diehm

I don’t know about folks sitting around drinking coffee in Linn County locations but discussion of the Christine Staten story about the log cabin – she calls “Old Diehm” – went the rounds at Gary Furnish’s donut shop in Paola.

This amazingly solid and impressive structure serves as a reminder to what it took to settle this region: the sweat, the strength, the fortitude, the endurance, the gumption, the sacrifice, the dreams, simply the willingness to “hang it all out” for a future.

I suggested moving the cabin to the still fairly new Linn County Safety Rest Area, where Kansas Highway 52 crosses U.S. Highway 69 at Trading Post or what has already been recognized as a stop along the Frontier Military Scenic Byway.

In addition, the site celebrates our Native American heritage, as well as that of the Marais des Cygnes Wildlife area.

If needing to stretch your legs at the rest area, a walking path takes travelers from one historical marker to another:

The Potawatomi Tribe’s forced removal from Indiana in 1838;

Pro and anti-slavery forces at work in Kansas;

Settlers crossing the military highway on their way into the unknown;

Movement of soldiers along the road between Fort Scott and Fort Leavenworth along the “Permanent Indian Frontier”;

Soldiers did the repair work on the military highway in 1844 as a matter of frontier defense;

Establishment of a trading post nearby that dealt in fur, whiskey and pro-anti slavery barbs being traded back and forth;

The present day and our high rate of travel;

Nearby stands the Marais des Cygne Martyrs Memorial and a marker for the Marias des Cygne Massacre.

The rest area’s interior reads and looks like a museum. So what’s missing outside? Try something old, something real. Try a cabin! A real log home built and used by settlers who came to Eastern Kansas, like the peaceful Diehm brothers – Friedrich and Jacob from Baden, Germany, in 1857 – right in the midst of Bleeding Kansas.

From this one cabin, a whole future of Miami and Linn county residents would receive their start, many of whom I have taught in Miami and Linn county schools between 1977 and in the present at Prairie View High School. I know the family and many of you do, too.

Miami County’s loss became a gain for Linn County, when the “Old Diehm” log cabin was lifted onto a truck bed and taken to a new resting place in Linn County south of Parker.

The current owner, Christine Staten, said the cabin should be enjoyed by everyone. “I want to see it restored, and I would sell it to a historical group for what we have spent on it.

“It doesn’t qualify for state funds like the Gerth Cabin in Greeley because it is owned privately, and it can’t be listed as a historic landmark because it’s been moved,” Staten said.

When the original owner, George Diehm, realized the state historical society saw nothing special about the cabin and said there was no money for restoration, he gave the cabin to Staten of Paola, who with her husband, Craig, had bought land in Linn County, south of Parker, and used their own funds to move the cabin.

When George and his wife Loretta chose to build a new home on the Jacob Diehm cabin site, George had called the Kansas State Historical Society. “They were more interested in an old barn that had already been taken down. They said the cabin was pretty typical for a cabin of the era, and they recognized the style,” George said.

The cabin may be typical in its architecture, but the pioneering family story it tells is real. “There was an 18-foot square center, axe marks on the logs, most likely walnut logs off of the creek, all cut by hand, possibly dragged by oxen, and the construction all labor intensive.

“The impressive logs were solid and placed on a limestone footing. Flat rocks, no mortar, and stacked on level ground,” Diehm said.

Everybody pitched in to build this structure, including the women and children. Construction had to be finished before Jacob’s wife, Katherine, gave birth to George’s grandfather, Gilbert, the youngest of eight children in 1877.

There’s so much more in those old logs than typical architecture. Imagine what they’ve seen and, yet, what can be passed on to future generations about overcoming the odds in Kansas.

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Posted by admin on Aug 17 2011. Filed under Kevin Gray, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry