Retirement:
Our grandfather, "Pawpaw" Oakley Vincent worked for the Louisville & Nashville in Birmingham, Alabama as a car repairman.  He retired Dec. 9, 1937.  Click HERE to see Oakley Vincent's retirement certificate from L&N Railroad.  A few years prior to his retirement he sold his house and moved to Calera in Shelby County, Alabama where he eventually built a log cabin or log house.


Before Calera:
On the 1930 Census, he states he owned a home in Tarrant City that was worth $1,500.00.  Sometime between then and 1936 they sold that house and moved to a rental near Thorsby according to my father Wilburn G. "Hap" Vincent.  While there, Oakley bought land he planned to retire on.  Oakley's boys helped him build the log home which he said on the 1940 census was worth only $500.  He didn't mention the hundreds of acres of land but did mention he owned his farm.  The home was under construction at the writing of a 1936 letter Oakley wrote Oma while she was on one of her many trips away from home.

In the same letter he spoke of renting his work "shack" for a $1 a month.  This was where he lived in all week while working for the railroad.  He only came home on weekends.  That's when he and his boys built his log house.  My dad ("Hap") told me his father used logs for floor joists.  Photos show the exterior was covered in clapboard siding from the sawmill which is why you can't see the logs.


Construction:
I was too young to remember the log house but my oldest brother, Rick Vincent (1941-2017), and some older Vincent cousins have remembered it well.  I interviewed Rick On Feb. 19, 2009 about the log house.  Later on Feb. 20, 2013 I asked cousin Wanda Jean Vincent Roden (1937-2018) about it also.  Both drew a rough sketch for me.  Rick drew what he could recall of the house plan or layout, Jean drew a rough picture of the outside and yet another sketch of the rest of the property (more on that later).


The House Plan:
Rick's sketch is below (click for a larger photo).  It was small and hard to figure out even though he explained it to me.

Cousin Jean's sketch was of the outside of the house and the grounds.  She did not discuss much with me about the interior layout of the log house.

We should be very grateful that Jean's sister Sue has drawn a beautiful and detailed sketch of the floor plan.  Here is an image of Sue's drawing below.  Click the image for a larger one that I've enhanced for clarity (Click image for larger photo).


If we over simplify and combine the two drawings, we'll see that they both agree on almost everything.  Sue's drawing helps us better see the scale.  There was a large front porch.  After entering the house, there was a breezeway between the two large rooms at the front of the house with Oakley's bedroom on the right and Oma's bedroom on the left.


The Bedrooms:
To the right of Oakley's bedroom was a fireplace in the center of the wall with a window on either side of it.  In the right-front corner of his room was a radio that children were not allowed to touch.  There was no electricity.  The radio ran off batteries.

To the left of Oma's bedroom was a fireplace in the center of the wall with a window on either side of it.  No one was allowed to enter her bedroom.  She had a pistol which she probably kept close at hand during the night so this may have been one reason why no one was allowed in her room.

Sue remembered only one bed in Oakley's bedroom.  Rick remembered two beds in Oakley's and two beds in Oma's.  He may be wrong because he was only a little child at the time.  However, Oma sometimes took him with her on trips so he may have seen her bedroom which was off limits.

Oma's bedroom had a single entrance and exit.  Oakley's had an entrance opposite the breezeway from Oma's bedroom then there was a door to the right rear of his room that led to the other two rooms. 


The Dining Room and Kitchen:
Here Rick's memory differs.  He remembers a bedroom next.   It's likely Rick's and Sue's memories are both right because they recall different time periods.  Rick was only 3 when Sue entered the first grade.  Sue's memories are from an earlier time when there was a large dining table in the next room and another dining table in the last room which was the kitchen.  Sue and Rick both recall this last room was the kitchen where the stove was.

Sue remembers a door exiting the right side of the kitchen that led to a path crossing a creek to the little shack where Jesse Grice lived.  Jesse was a toothless, illiterate hobo that was wandering down the railroad one day and stopped at the Vincent log house asking for work.  They took him in and he became a permanent fixture for the rest of his life.  We never found out how old he was, who his family was, or anything about him, only that he was willing to work for his room and board.

After Oakley and Oma were too old to care for Jesse, their youngest son, Harry Vincent (1924-2001) and his wife Millard (Aunt "Judy") took Jesse in.  He was their family babysitter and stayed with them until he died.

While living with Oakley, Jesse lived in the little shack across the creek behind the house according to Sue.  It should be noted that all the grandkids loved Jesse and thought he was a good man.  I remember he was always kind to us. 

Cousin Jim Vincent told me a funny story about the little creek.  It ran under the outhouse.  It was a wet weather creek that only flooded when there were heavy rains.  The rain would literally flush the poop from the ditch under the outhouse and wash it downstream.  This was an intentional ingenious design so that Oakley didn't have to relocate the outhouse too often.

Back in the kitchen of the log house, there was an exit to the back porch -- a narrow, screened in porch (according to Rick) that had features Sue didn't mention.  Rick said there was a pantry at the end of the porch and a salt box for meat.  In the old days, when a man killed a hog, he cut it up then salted it heavily for a few days prior to hanging it in the smokehouse to preserve it.  The salt drew most of the moisture out of the meat and the smokehouse took care of the rest.

Outside of the back porch, Sue wrote on her sketch "Never used this side of house."  In his sketch, Rick drew a door exiting the screened back porch with a path leading to a well.  It's possible that Oma made sure her precious little granddaughters "Never used" that side of the house because old folks were always cautioning us young children to "never go near the well."  They were very afraid a child would fall in and die.  Time has proven them right all too often.

There's no doubt from stories Jean told me that Oma loved her and Sue dearly and looked for them to run straight for their "Mother Vincent's" house soon as they got off the school bus (as told by Jean).  Because they lived just down the road, these two little girls new our grandparents better than anyone.


Jean's Sketch of the Log House:
When I interviewed Jean in 2013, it was only 5 years before she passed away.  She was in poor health at the time and not feeling well so I didn't want to stay too long.  Still, she was kind enough to draw a quick sketch for me.  She did not draw the interior of the log house like her sister did.  Instead, she sketched the outside of the house and the surrounding property.

Here's her sketch of the outside of the house:

It was Jean who remembered there were two windows, one either side of the fireplace, on each end of the house and two windows in front where the large front porch was.  This perfectly matches the only photo we have of the full front of the house:


There's a really sad story why this photo comes from the Birmingham News.  A murder was committed in this house after Oakley and Oma sold the property.

Another family had moved in.  Jean told me that the black family who lived down the road often worked for our grandparents.  They had a young son who, if I understood her correctly, was never quite right mentally.  There was something wrong with him.  Although the Vincents never had a problem, he apparently attacked and killed the people who lived in the log house.  The news photo was taken as part of the story about the murder.

The news photo doesn't show much about the rest of the house but it clearly shows the doorway to the breezeway in the center, the clapboard siding, the large porch running the width of the house, and the two front windows -- one looking out from each bedroom.

In June of 2014, my wife Linda and I visited a museum in Effingham County, GA that had old homes, barns, and farm buildings which had been relocated there to illustrate how people lived in former times.  One of the old homes had two front rooms that were very much like Oakley and Oma's log house:


The old house was made of logs covered with clapboard siding.  The entrance led to a breezeway with a large bedroom on either side.  It had a large front porch that ran nearly the length of the front.  It had a large fireplace on either end with windows on both sides of both fireplaces.  It is hard to tell from this photo but you may notice a ramp on the left of the house.  This was a walkway added later by the museum to guide visitors around to the back porch.

I thought the back porch was particularly interesting (see below):


Although the layout was somewhat different, there was a built-in table that ran across one edge of the back porch that matches the exact same location of a "table" on the porch in Rick Vincent's sketch.  The fact there was a well at this spot in the house at Effingham County perfectly matches Rick's sketch showing a well just off the screened back porch of the Vincent log house in Calera.

I've visited some relatives homes that had a well so close to the porch that you could reach it without leaving the porch and others where the well was near the back porch.  It's interesting that the well was often near the back of the house close to the back porch.


Jean's Sketch of the Property:
Last but certainly not least, Jean's sketch ran for 3 pages in my research log book.  After I scanned the last two of those pages, I edited and combined them into one image which is too large to show below and a thumbnail wouldn't be helpful.  Instead, I'll have to explain it here and give a link for the larger IMAGE.  CLICK HERE to see the large IMAGE of both pages.

The IMAGE of Jean's sketch shows the layout of the property.  Her memory of it also matches what cousin Jim Vincent described to me over the phone -- those things Jim could recall from the times his father took him there to go hunting.

Jean says U.S. Highway 31 was to the left in the sketch (page 14 of my research log).  The L&N Railroad ran across the dirt road in front of our grandparents property and a driveway ran nearly parallel to the railroad.  The front porch of the house faced the dirt road, not the driveway.  There was a corn crib close to the dirt road on the front edge of the property.

Illustrated on the next page of my research log (page 15) was a continuation of the dirt road.  I had asked Jean where her dad's house was located.  As you can see at the bottom of her sketch, there was a barn just around a gentle curve on the opposite side of the road from the house.  This matches Jim Vincent's memory also.  When I mentioned the road to him, he remembered the barn was on the opposite side of the road from the house.


Jean's parents' house:
Sue and Jean's father was Andrew Gay Vincent, Sr. (1915-1993) who preferred to be called "Sam", a name he picked for himself.  Sam Vincent's home was just around the curve from the barn and on the same side of the road as the barn.  On further down the road was another curve where lived the black families who worked for Oakley and helped him maintain the farm.

I made notes based on what Jean told me.  She said the head of house for these families was named Louiza.  Her oldest daughter was Marietta.  Marietta was eldest of 10 children.  Louiza was also a midwife who had delivered Oma's youngest two children, Nat and Harry, as well as Sue and her kid sister Joann.

Louiza's son was the 18 year old who murdered the family that bought the log house after Oakley and Oma moved away.

I wrote at the bottom of this page that "Sam Vincent's house" was a "(tent)" because I misunderstood something Jean told me.  She said her dad got the tent that my parents lived in on Hardy Rd. in Hueytown, AL when I was 3 years old.  It is true that Sam got the tent but it was never located here in Calera, Shelby County, AL.  Instead, both Clint (Jean's husband), and Sue confirmed that the tent was erected elsewhere.

Sue said, "... the tent we got from your Dad was put up in Talladega County on Lincoln hwy."  For those who are interested, here's a photo of the tent:

It doesn't look much like a tent in the photo.  It was actually two old WWII surplus hospital tents, the type shown in the TV show M*A*S*H.  They built a wooden floor out of rough cut lumber and erected the two tents on top of the floor.  A tin roof protected them from the rain.  As I recall, the windows were screens made of fabric.  You can see in the photo that they were covered with canvas curtains on the outside to protect the occupants from the weather.

They had electricity and water but no indoor bathroom facilities.  It was quite some time later that dad hand dug a septic tank.  During the time they lived in the tent, there was a privy "out back."  Rick said it was behind the tent to the left in this photo.  I was too young at the time to "go" out so they made me potty on a little metal chamber pot.  Good grief!  Was that thing cold in the winter!

We lived there from late 1949 or so until dad finished the house enough by 1950 or '51 for mother to move her furniture into it while dad was at work one day.  She was sick and tired of living in a tent with Aunt Evelyn, Uncle John, her husband, and 3 little kids.

If anyone else has any stories about the log house that Oma and Oakley built in Calera, we'd love to hear them.  I never heard any of dad's brothers ever mention the place much but Oakley's 1936 letter clearly states that "the boys" helped him build the thing.  I knew my dad hated working on it.  He was 17 years old at the time and would have much rather been dating or running around with the guys than working his rear end off helping his father build a log house!