Marble Rock founder’s cabin unveiled at celebration

By Thomas Nelson, tnelson@charlescitypress.com

Marble Rock Days kicked off on Saturday and along with a parade, it featured the 1852 Beelar Log Cabin grand opening.

The Beelar Log Cabin was home to Marble Rock’s founder, Jacob Beelar, and was established in 1852.

Beelar first came to what would be Floyd County in 1851, and built a 16-foot-by-16-foot log cabin. After living in the cabin for eight years he died, but the cabin and town lived on.

Marble Rock was originally called Beelar’s Grove, said Marble Rock Historical Society member Diane Black.

After building his cabin, Beelar brought his family of nine out from Tennessee, and added a second floor to his cabin, Black said.

“This (the cabin) was originally over by the river, a couple blocks away,” she said.

The historical society has been working on the cabin’s renovation for eight years, Black said.

“It had layers and layers, outside and inside, of construction,” Black said. “We had to reshape the whole building. We had to replace logs that were rotten.”

The cabin is two stories and has a kitchen, downstairs living room and bedroom upstairs.

In the kitchen you can find dried sage hanging from the ceiling along with an old empty hornet’s nest.

The cabin is as rustic as one would imagine a century-and-a-half-old building to be, except for the television in the corner showing a slideshow of the renovation project.

There is a pump organ on the lefthand side of the living room as you come in, and glass cases full of artifacts from the time that Beelar lived in what was Beelar’s Grove.

The pump organ was allegedly brought in on a covered wagon, and was recently acquired by the Marble Rock Historical Society, Black said.

The Beelar family lived in the home until a man named John Jess came and lived in the cabin for the rest of his life until 1974.

After that a woman bought the property and wanted to build a new house in its place, Black said.

“She knew it was log underneath, so she offered it to the historical society and we agreed to take it,” Black said. “We finally got it done, and its finished now.”

History buffs will be aware that Iowa first became a state in 1846, five years before Beelar first traveled to Marble Rock.

Charles City was established by Joseph Kelly in 1850, according to the “History of Floyd County,” only a year prior to Beelar establishing Marble Rock.

The Cabin can be found in a row of museums and tributes to the history of Marble Rock.