A survivor of weather, trespassers and the steady tick of time, the old Eddleman homestead now leans more than stands at the western end of White Street in Pilot Point. Though first glance would tell any bystander that the building is a relic, the true age and significance of the structure lie hidden behind the paint-chipped wooden siding that wraps around the exterior walls.
A trip into the attic reveals the building’s secret — under the plaster and wood is a hand-hewn log cabin dating back to 1853. It stands on one of the first pieces of land purchased in Pilot Point, it saw the city’s first child born to it and it housed one of Pilot Point’s pioneers until his death in 1904.
“The original owner was R.W. Eddleman,” said Rowland Funk, husband to Maggie Funk, who is a descendant of the settler.
“This is the original cabin here.”
In 1852, Dr. R.W. Eddleman traveled to Pilot Point from Missouri with his wife, mother and several other family members. He purchased a plot of land and by 1853 he’d built a one-room cabin on it. He added a second room soon after, replacing a dirt cellar that doubled as shelter from the harsh, untamed surroundings the Eddlemans found themselves in.
“When Dr. Eddleman first came here, the first thing they did was they dug that out and they covered [it],” explained Funk. “That was obviously for safety and a place to live at the time. This was Indian country.”
Eddleman went on to open the Star Drug Store on the north side of The Square. The drug store’s original wooden building was replaced in 1872 by a brick structure that still stands downtown; once housing Jay’s Cafe, it’s now being prepared for the October opening of the Mockingbird Cafe.
The doctor began adding on to his small cabin in the 1880s and by the 1900s, he’d built a second story and encased the whole structure in wooden siding. Downstairs, the original structure is visible only by its thick walls.
Mrs. Funk, the great, great granddaughter of R.W. Eddleman, has her own memories of the house. She remembers her grandmother, and avid writer and poet, lying in her bed in the original room of the cabin. An outdoor balcony, now collapsed, was once the spot Mrs. Funk spent nights stargazing.
The house was the central hub for family gatherings for Mrs. Funk. Eventually it became her own home after she moved in to take care of her great uncle and aunt until their deaths.
“He was the last one to live here,” she said of her great uncle, also named R.W. Eddleman. “I lived with him to take care of he and his wife.”
Mrs. Funk relocated after their passing and now, time and vacancy have taken their tolls on the house. Its banisters prop up second-floor balconies in a precarious fashion while portions of the porch sag under the weight of old age. The cabin itself seems sturdy and is thought to be mostly preserved beneath sheetrock, but it is starting to show the signs of wear and tear that plague Eddleman’s later addition.
Preserving this piece of Pilot Point’s history has proven to be a complicated process, however. The home and the 94 acres it rests on are currently for sale for $1.2 million. Mrs. Funk said she and the rest of Eddleman’s descendants are willing to donate the cabin to the city if officials can figure out a way to detach it from the rest of the structure and move it to city land. The City Council began discussing that move in 2011.
“The home has significant historical value for our city and our area. We would like to save it and see it restored,” said City Manager Tom Adams. “We still have a number of challenges to work through before that can be accomplished.”
A team of architects from the American Institute of Architecture that visited Pilot Point in February also agreed that the structure should be preserved. In their final report on the city’s cultural resources, the Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team, or R/UDAT directed officials to “pull out all the stops to save the house.”
The current plans are to detach the cabin and move it to a spot on Washington St. to share a space with the old Bloomfield Schoolhouse and the Pilot Point Chamber of Commerce.
The process of moving an intact structure can be expensive and risky, however, especially given the age of the Eddleman cabin.
“If there’s any way to save that cabin what they’re probably going to have to do is disassemble it on the site, and number everything and take it and reassemble it on another site,” said City Historian Jay Melugin. “I’d like to see that happen.”
Adams said that disassembly may be an option and that the project is on the city’s goal list for 2014. He added that officials are still working to drum up the funding they need to save the structure.
Meanwhile, the rough wooden bones that have propped the Eddleman cabin up for the past 160 years continue to stand and wait, ready to meet whatever future Pilot Point has in store.
This article originally appeared in the Pilot Point Post-Signal.
Heather Michelle Tipton 