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Greetings,
This story from the NY Times has more of a RevWar slant, but the information presented seems to be equally applicable to CW-period winter cabins. Living in such structures was certainly not like a weekend at Club Med but they were reasonably comfortable and usually performed the task expected of them. This reminds me of another study (I think it dealt with medieval Viking wooden houses) proving that simply hanging a blanket over a room doorway usually resulted in a 20+ degree improvement in the interior temperature.
Regards,
Mark Jaeger
Valley Forge Cabins Warmer Than Thought
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: February 2, 2004
Filed at 1:48 p.m. ET
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- American schoolchildren learn all about the hardships endured by George Washington's men at Valley Forge. But a recent weeklong experiment suggests the soldiers' log cabins were pretty comfortable.
Park Ranger Marc Brier and several volunteers spent Tuesday to Sunday in a replica of a Revolutionary soldiers' cabin -- in weather colder than most of the 1777 winter -- and monitored the temperature inside and out. By Sunday afternoon, with the thermometer reading 31 degrees outside, the temperature inside the mud-and-clay structure was 64 by the wall near the fireplace, 70 in front of the fire, and 47 by the door.
``The cabins worked,'' said Brier, a ranger at Valley Forge for 18 years. The soldiers ``had a decent house to live in -- a home for the winter, a good place to come back to'' after spending the day outside.
Of course, that winter home was dark and cramped, with a dozen men squeezed into the 14-by-16-foot space. Food was in short supply in the winter of 1777; there was not enough clothing to go around, and some men did not even have shoes; and several thousand troops died of diseases.
Still, Brier said there is considerable evidence countering the popular picture -- which he said was started by local amateur historians in the 1850s -- of a bedraggled, freezing and starving colonial army clinging to survival.
``We have this image of the soldiers, a few guys huddled around a campfire in the snow, instead of a professional army that was able to come in here, build 2,000 log cabins, and dig miles of trenches,'' Brier said. ``They even built a bridge across the Schuylkill in January. If they were hurting so bad, how did they do these things?''
Brier said he was not trying to diminish the sacrifices of the Continental Army but to give the soldiers more credit than history has accorded them.
He said the men's accounts back up his findings.
``In most of these diaries, the people that lived in the cabins say they were tolerably comfortable,'' he said. One officer even described one wall lined with books from the Philadelphia library and the other with cheese his mother had sent.
This story from the NY Times has more of a RevWar slant, but the information presented seems to be equally applicable to CW-period winter cabins. Living in such structures was certainly not like a weekend at Club Med but they were reasonably comfortable and usually performed the task expected of them. This reminds me of another study (I think it dealt with medieval Viking wooden houses) proving that simply hanging a blanket over a room doorway usually resulted in a 20+ degree improvement in the interior temperature.
Regards,
Mark Jaeger
Valley Forge Cabins Warmer Than Thought
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: February 2, 2004
Filed at 1:48 p.m. ET
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- American schoolchildren learn all about the hardships endured by George Washington's men at Valley Forge. But a recent weeklong experiment suggests the soldiers' log cabins were pretty comfortable.
Park Ranger Marc Brier and several volunteers spent Tuesday to Sunday in a replica of a Revolutionary soldiers' cabin -- in weather colder than most of the 1777 winter -- and monitored the temperature inside and out. By Sunday afternoon, with the thermometer reading 31 degrees outside, the temperature inside the mud-and-clay structure was 64 by the wall near the fireplace, 70 in front of the fire, and 47 by the door.
``The cabins worked,'' said Brier, a ranger at Valley Forge for 18 years. The soldiers ``had a decent house to live in -- a home for the winter, a good place to come back to'' after spending the day outside.
Of course, that winter home was dark and cramped, with a dozen men squeezed into the 14-by-16-foot space. Food was in short supply in the winter of 1777; there was not enough clothing to go around, and some men did not even have shoes; and several thousand troops died of diseases.
Still, Brier said there is considerable evidence countering the popular picture -- which he said was started by local amateur historians in the 1850s -- of a bedraggled, freezing and starving colonial army clinging to survival.
``We have this image of the soldiers, a few guys huddled around a campfire in the snow, instead of a professional army that was able to come in here, build 2,000 log cabins, and dig miles of trenches,'' Brier said. ``They even built a bridge across the Schuylkill in January. If they were hurting so bad, how did they do these things?''
Brier said he was not trying to diminish the sacrifices of the Continental Army but to give the soldiers more credit than history has accorded them.
He said the men's accounts back up his findings.
``In most of these diaries, the people that lived in the cabins say they were tolerably comfortable,'' he said. One officer even described one wall lined with books from the Philadelphia library and the other with cheese his mother had sent.