Downingtown Log House
historic house in Pennsylvania, United States
Downingtown Log House is an American historic house located in Downingtown, Chester County, Pennsylvania. It was built circa 1700 and is a 1+1⁄2-story, round log structure measuring 21 feet 9 inches by 25 feet. The building is a house rather than a cabin because log cabins are only one floor. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
Description and history
The Log House was constructed circa 1700 by early English settlers Jeremiah Collett or Joseph Hickman (the exact date and builder are unknown). It is the earliest surviving example of European settlement in central Chester County. Thomas Moore purchased the property in 1713 and constructed one of the county's first grist mill across the street in 1716. During the 18th century, the house served variously as a house, tavern, and trading post before becoming a rental property in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is located on the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike near Brandywine Creek.
Owned by members of the Downing family for about 200 years, the house has been owned by the Borough of Downingtown since 1940, when Thomas W. Downing willed the property to the borough.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Downingtown Log House” as historic house in Pennsylvania, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5303216. Authority coordinates are 40.006, -75.705. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1700, 1979, 1713 and 1716.
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This entry incorporates text from “Downingtown Log House” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.