COAN HALL
When John Mottrom came to the Indian district of Chicacoan to live, it must have been like the Garden of Eden. The river was there; the trees that were pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the beast of the field and the fowl of the air. Except for the Indian clearings along the margin of the river it was new, untouched and as it was in the beginning.
Mottrom chose a site for his house on the east bank of the Coan, and like all early Virginia settlers he knew how to select the spot. Springs were numerous in this region so that it was not necessary to dig a well.
And how did he go about building a house in this wilderness, so far from any place where skilled labor, tools and bricks, glass and nails could be obtained? No records to answer this question have been uncovered to this date. Perhaps, he brought indentured servants and a few crude tools with him in the shallop.
What kind of a house did he build? It is fairly certain that he did not build a log cabin, even for a temporary shelter.
In the seventeenth century the English settlers in Virginia built log forts, log prisons and log garrison houses but they were of "logs hewn square," and they were built in the traditional Old World manner.
These early settlers mentioned living in cottages, huts and frame cabins but, so far as is known, they never said that they lived in log cabins. The American-type log cabin is believed to have developed later and in another part of the country.
Mottrom and his men may have erected temporary shelters of saplings, boughs and bark, similar to the Indian houses.
If wood was cut from the forest for his permanent home, time was needed. Locust for sills, oak for framing, heart pine and cedar were at hand, but green lumber had to be seasoned.
Mottrom may have made several trips to Jamestown or Maryland for artisans and building supplies before his new home was completed. Meanwhile, he may have brought his family to live in one of the temporary shelters.