With only a couple of inches to spare, the roof of Newcom Tavern is eased through Route 25 underpass on its way to Carillon Park.
Current contents of Newcom Tavern pertain strictly to the earliest days of Dayton, without the items from later periods that were displayed at the Monument Avenue location.
We see a set of antlers, possibly from one of the deer shot by Robert Edgar during his daybreak vigils at the Miami river. A rocker and a cradle came up the river with the Thompson family, from whom the Wright brothers were descended. Among other interesting furniture are Colonel Newcom’s favorite chair, a rope bed typical of the period, a spinning wheel, and the long table which served in the tavern dining room. Pewter, odds and ends of dishes, brooms, stone jugs, a bullet mold, a corn grinder and a coffee mill are among the artifacts. An item of special curiosity is a sand box dating from the time the cabin was used as a school. The box wasn’t for play, however; pupils, lacking paper, inscribed their lessons in the smooth sand, and “erased” them after the schoolmaster’s inspection.
For the two-mile trailer trip from Monument Avenue to Carillon Park, the roof of the Tavern was removed so the structure would pass under power lines. The sides were braced with stout timbers and steel framing, and a number of termite-weakened logs were replaced. Fortunately, some weathered but sturdy logs were found in an old barn, so all of the structure retains the 1796 appearance. All in all, it was a touchy job of moving—likened by one observer to “holding a house of cards in one hand while dodging under low doorways.”
Tavern is reassembled at Carillon Park next to the stone pioneer house. Rude log houses were typical of earliest frontier construction, although stone was often used in areas where it was plentiful. Chimney design of Carillon Park’s stone house, seen in background of the photograph, shows influence of the Moravians, a religious sect that came to Ohio from North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Georgia in the early 1800s.
The Tavern is seen on its new site just after restoration.
Robert Edgar, like most pioneer builders, used a wide range of woods—whatever was available in the surrounding forest. Ash, hickory, walnut, beech, elm, oak, sycamore—all these are identifiable in the Tavern. The large fireplace is lined with limestone and faced with rubble stone from the river. The logs rest upon one another at the mortised corners, without attachment, although wooden pegs can be seen in mortised interior beams. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the structure is the stick and mortar chimney, typical of early houses in regions where stone was scarce and costly. Stone was plentiful by the Miami, but Edgar, no doubt handier with the adz than the trowel, stuck to the easier, faster method.