LSU’s Rural Life Museum Displays     

Central’s Old Stoner-Athens Cabin  

By Sean Griffin

The Stoner-Athens Cabin at the Rural Life Museum wasn’t built as an exhibit.   Over 160 years ago it served as a family home just off Greenwell Springs Road.

The building is now helping LSU educate museum visitors about rural life long ago.

The Stoner-Athens Cabin, built from pine logs over 160 years ago, is not part of the Rural Life Museum off Essen at I-10.

The cabin was located at Stoney Point on Greenwell Springs Road along the Amite River. The land it was on was first settled by Europeans in 1811.   The property actually exchanged hands twice prior to1871 when Reverend Abraham Stoner purchased it from John Powers.

The exact year that the Stoner-Athens Cabin was built isn’t known, but the construction is estimated to have happened between 1830 and 1850. Stoner came to Port Hudson from Ohio in 1869 and he purchased the land two years later. The land was originally used for cotton farming but all cotton production was stopped on the farm after the boll weevil infestation in 1905.

Way Station

The U.S. Land Office was located in Greensburg and the Stoner-Athens Cabin was originally located on the well-traveled Baton Rouge-Greensburg Road. The cabin was used as a way station for stagecoaches along that route.

Reverend Stoner’s daughter, Julia, was born in 1876 and grew up in the cabin. Reverend Stoner donated an acre of land in 1893 for use as a school for white children in the area. Julia taught at the school and eventually married James Hayden Athens in 1904.

 

The couple raised a child in the cabin, Edwin Percy Athens, but the family also spent time living in Ohio and Tennessee. Julia Stoner Athens lived to the age of 101.   Julia’s son, Edwin Percy Athens, attended school in Baton Rouge, Ohio and Tennessee. He then attended LSU and graduated in 1927.   He accepted a job right out of college and moved to Florida, and he inherited the Stoney Point land after his mother’s death in 1977.

Pine Logs

The architecture of the Stoner-Athens Cabin is simply designed with logs of pine. The wood hardened over the years and natural resins now protect the planks and keep it from falling victim to decay and insects. The logs used in the cabin were assembled using dovetail notch construction. There is a single room with a sleeping loft above.

There are two porches on the front and back and a gable roof. The original cabin was built on large cypress piers, but only two are present at the Rural Life Museum.

The chimney is not original to the home but reproduced to represent the original cat and daub chimney the cabin used to feature. This type of chimney is made of wood slats covered in clay and then baked and hardened by lighting a fire in the fireplace.

The cabin was dismantled and then reassembled and restored when it reached the Rural Life Museum .  It is installed in the museum’s Folk Life Section. Hibernia National Bank donated the funds to relocate the Stoner-Athens Cabin.