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As I am working on my narrative genealogy I love finding something solid, an actual building that one of my ancestors built. Something that survived the centuries.
        I found just such a building in South Carolina.
        Back during the revolution some of my ancestors lived in Old Ninety-Six. That's a village in South Carolina which was so named because it was estimated to be 96 miles from the Cherokee town of Keowee.
         It was a trading post in 1751. In November of 1772, workers completed a courthouse and a large brick jail at Ninety-Six. The symbols of civilization for backcountry South Carolina. The first Revolutionary battle outside New England was fought at Old Ninety Six in 1775.
          One of my ancestors, Andrew Logan, was a member of the Petit Jury and his family lived above the courthouse. Andrew listed the courthouse as his home on documents in 1778 and 1779. A reconstructed census for 1780 says Andrew's son Hendrick, also my direct ancestor, lived there, and it seems pretty likely that Hendrick's daughter Jemima, who married my ancestor Samuel Tullock, was born there in 1777.
           But in 1780 the British arrived to reclaim the town.It became a staging area for the British troops and a fortress. In May, 1781, a thousand patriots under General Nathaniel Green surrounded the fort. The month-long standoff became the longest siege of the Revolution. When the British left, they burned it down and the village never recovered.
           In the 1960s, Greenwood County created an historic site at the old fort. That's also about the time a log cabin was discovered when the siding was ripped off of a house in Greenwood.. Turns out, the well-preserved two-story cabin had been built by Andrew Logan after Ninety-Six was destroyed.
           The cabin was moved to Ninety-Six where it stands today. Old Ninety-Six became a National Park in 1976, and Andrew's cabin is open to the public.
            It's on my list of places I have to see.