No matter how long you’ve lived in Hickory, you may not know what the log cabin coming in or going out to town to the east is all about. It sits there, with an almost impenetrable fence all around it, a tribute to an earlier age. But how? But why?
Now the logic is that it might be the original Hickory Tavern, After all, the city was named for the stopover that sprang up as a nightly resting and refreshment place, accommodating stagecoach travelers on their way between Salisbury and Morganton. Nope. At best, some have called it, “a replica of the original Hickory Tavern.” Unfortunately, the structure has nothing to do with the founding architecture of Hickory. But such a connection does indeed make sense.
Actually, the two and a half story building came from Startown, a rural community to the south of Hickory. The cabin was built around 1820 by Joseph Wilson for the wife he married two years earlier and himself. Both were descendants of the original Euro families that moved to what would become Catawba County back when it was part of Rowan County, before it turned in to Lincoln County, then Catawba. Over the years, owners tried to dress it up by adding clapboard siding but underneath it was still just a log cabin.
Around 1952, the Hickory Garden Club hit upon the idea of dismantling the home, log by log and bringing it to town. Since there was an early cemetery located on the site they planned to place it, the idea all kind of made sense. The house was a historic artifact around which flowers could be planted and the original Hickory Tavern, long gone, could be remembered.
It is likely that the invisible force driving the project was Wilson Warlick. At the time he was a US district court judge, appointed to the bench by President Harry Truman. Born in 1892 in Newton, Warlick remembered playing in and around the cabin as a child. To have it preserved as a relic of an earlier age was something of a tribute to him. It also demonstrated a love for history, and preserved some of his own. Once placed in Hickory, he knew it would stand long after he was gone. It has.
Now the Wilson Cabin sits in Robinson Park, overlooked by passersby, unused by anyone. Some reports indicated that most of the remains from the graves in the Robinson Cemetery were removed to Oakwood, but the graveyard has not been completely cleared which complicates the matter of what to do with the property. It’s not even clear if the Garden Club (is there still a garden club in Hickory) undertakes the job of keeping the site manicured.
For answers to these and other questions connected to the lonely log cabin that has been a feature of Hickory for over 70 years so far, stay tuned.
Photos: The Wilson Log Cabin during its removal from Startown and today. Many thanks to devoted reader Gail Wright for her question that prompted this story.
