Porter, Gene Stratton, Cabin

Gene Stratton Porter was Indiana's most widely-read woman author. She wrote twelve novels, seven nature books, a book for children, two books of poetry, one book of essays, and numerous magazine articles for Outing, Century, Ladies Home Journal, McCalls, and Good Housekeeping. Mrs. Porter is estimated to have had fifty million readers, and her works were translated into seven foreign languages and braille, Three of her novels, Girl of the Limberlost, Michael O'Halloran, and The Harvester, were made into motion pictures and were great box-office successes. Mrs. Porter was also a noted naturalist, photographer, and illustrator. In 1895 Mrs. Porter, then 32 years old, her husband, Charles, and her daughter, Jeannette, moved into their new home which they called "Limberlost Cabin" in honor of the great Limberlost Swamp which stretched for many miles just south of their home. Local residents had named this area "Limberlost" after an early surveyor of the area, "Limber Jim Corbus, was lost in the quicksand of the swamp.

Limberlost Cabin was a fourteen-room log structure designed by Mrs. Porter to be elegant while still blending with its magnificent natural surroundings. Very few log homes were built during this period that could match the Limberllost Cabin for either size or elegance. It is certainly both one of the largest and most elegant log homes of this period still remaining in Indiana.

It is an adaptation of rustic log architecture to the forms and styles of the late 19th Century and an effort to keep the comforts of gentil living in the rustic atmosphere of the Limberlost swamp. 1 Mrs. Porter loved to explore and study her magnificent natural surroundings, but she always maintained near reverential respect for nature in its original state. She scrupulously avoided destroying even the tiniest part of the life she studied. Rather, she observed and internalized her surroundings. This internalization allowed her to reproduce in her writings, photographs, and illustrations the intense life-like representation of nature which even other noted naturalists find elusive.

During her first several years at Limberlost, Mrs. Porter wrote, photographed, and illustrated several magazine articles on nature studies. In 1903 her first þook, Song of the Cardinal, was published. This was a fictional work, but was interwoven with fact and contained many of her nature photographs and watercolor illustrations. From 1903 to 1913 Mrs. Porter published five more novels: Freckles (1904) At the foot of the Rainbow (1907) A Girl of the Limberlost (1909), The Harvester K1911), and Laddie (1913). While living at Limberlost she also published five books of Nature Studies: What I Have Done With Birds (1907), Birds of the Bible K1909), Music of the Wild (1910), and Moths of the Limberlost (1912).