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The first houses of these pioneer people were built of logs and the cracks stopped with mud and after saw mills were established, the log houses were weather boarded. The roofs were covered with clapboards which were made by sawing a log into sections three to four feet long, then splitting it into blocks, then these blocks were rived or split into boards with a tool called a frow. After starting the frow into the block, it was worked through by a lever-like movement of the handle while the block was held in a fork. After the boards had been rived or split out they were dressed down smooth with a draw knife on what was called a shaving horse.

The furniture of the pioneer home was not upholstered as the present day furniture. The chairs were made of round poles and the seats of bark woven in. The bedsteads were made of heavy timber, heavy enough for a house of the modern type; and the springs were ropes looped back and forth on pegs. The mattress, or tick as it was called then, was filled with straw and was up so high that some people had a little step ladder to get up into the bed. The beds stood up 2 1/2 feet from the floor and a small trundle bed was kept under the parents bed for the small child. All of these with the old red cradle in which we all were rocked are things of the past. The old red cradle, a prominent piece of furniture, was found in the majority of Tomlinson homes.

End of The Tomlinson Family Record by S. W. Heath, 1905