About the Farmstead


The farmstead is composed of a dog-trot house, detached kitchen, cellar house, blacksmith shop, feed shed, animal barn, outhouse, a small family cemetery, a herb garden, a vegetable garden and a crop field.

The Dog Trot House


This "dog-trot" house (two log rooms separated by an open breezeway but connected by a common roof) was built in the winter of 1845-46 near what is today Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The building was expanded during the 1850s, when two rooms were attached to the back and a second story was added. The house is actually a log cabin that has been covered with clapboard siding, an "improvement" that was made as the owner became more prosperous and could afford commercially milled wood. Two types of notching are found on the logs; the lower story is half-dovetail, a style commonly used in the upper South, while the upper story is the simpler square-notch, commonly used in the lower South. The house has had several owners, the most notable being Richard M. Gano, who purchased the house in 1856.

General Richard Montgomery Gano

Mattie Gano

The Detached Kitchen


The half-dovetail notched logs in this cabin came from a cabin built in southeast Cook County near the Bloomfields Community. The dirt floor, exposed rafters, and small windows are typical of detached kitchens found in the North Central Texas region in the mid-nineteenth century. Early settlers often used a separate structure for cooking to eliminate the heat, smells, smoke, and fire danger from their living quarters.

The Blacksmith Shop


Housed in the shop is a working forge, complete with a leather hand-pump bellows. Many of the metal items in use at the farm were forged here.