Robert F. Aldous Cabin

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Robert Fredrick Aldous
Born in Kelsale, Suffolk, England, July 17, 1812

Robert Fredrick Aldous came to America about 1851, in company with his wife, Mary Anne Parkin, and five children; took up a temporary residence in Saint Louis, Missouri; then continued his journey to Salt Lake, arriving on 14 September 1853 in the Claudius V. Spencer company. He stayed in Salt Lake about a month, then moved with his family first to Ogden, then to Bingham’s Fort. In the early spring of 1861, he relocated to Huntsville. He supervised the building of three bridges in Ogden Canyon, helped build the first log school house in Huntsville, and super- vised the construction of a stone school house. He was one of the first school teachers in the town, and for five years was water master, serving in both positions without compensation. He held the offices of Elder, Seventy and High Priest in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Aldous Cabin History

Built in 1861, the Robert F. Aldous cabin was the first Huntsville home. It was located at the southwest corner of 7600 East and 200 South.

It began with one room. Later, Robert added the second and third rooms, a kitchen, and a parlor. The 4th room built onto the west end of the house was never finished, and part of the floor was left with an open hole in the ground. Grandma Aldous, worried that grandchildren would enter and fall into the hole, so she told them it was the “Boo Room” and to stay away.

The original cabin consisted of four rooms, each with an outside door. An outside ladder provided access to the attic above the cabin. When rooms were added to the house, the ladder remained. Later, children slept here as did guests. Holes in the logs of one wall indicate that Robert and Mary Anne’s two grown sons, George and Fred, slept here on “built in” bunk beds.

The original home had two lean-to porches, a small one on the east entering into the parlor and a long one on the south. On the long porch was a trough built for the milk cans and kept full of cold water to cool the milk. The water was drawn from the nearby well. Windows were on the south side of the cabin. North walls often had no windows.

The ceiling of the original room is low, with the top of the doorway reaching it. Probably all the ceilings were the same, just barely clearing the head of Robert, who was about six feet tall.

Little has been learned about the lot’s shrubs and trees, except for the poplar trees that Robert planted along the road to the north, and an apple tree in the southeast corner.

Their first son, George Parkin, and his wife, Christianne Magdalene Thurston, lived in this Huntsville home. Their son, George II, stayed in the family home and married Ethel Cowan in 1899. Twin sons, Harold and Horace (1899), and Lester (1901) were born in the cabin. In 1907, the new home was built where Gordon (1910) was born.

In 1907, three rooms were dismantled and the original cabin was moved to the barnyard. It was used as a coal shed. Eventually a framed building was attached to the east end. This is the north room at the present site. In 1991, the cabin was moved to the present location of 7400 East and 200 South.