Imagine standing next to a spinning wheel worn smooth by a pioneer woman's hand or touching a cradle in which she rocked her baby. Imagine seeing traps that helped feed and clothe a family before Lincoln was president.

     Those are the kind of furnishings -- historically correct and eye-opening -- that we want the entire community, young and old, to experience.

     When the house is finished, people who step inside for a tour will enter a time when families owned only what they could pack into a wagon for the journey to Texas, or what they could make once they arrived.

     With money contributed by the community, Southlake's log house pioneers will have a bed for the parents, a linsey-woolsey coverlet, straw ticks, a cradle, a percussion rifle and powder horn, a table and "pest control," ladder-back chairs with rawhide-strip seats, wooden plates and horn spoons, tools, traps and hides, a six-board trunk, a cupboard, a walking spinning wheel and a yarn winder, a hatchel, baskets, cast-iron pots, dog irons (to set pots on), fireplace tools, an adze, a froe, a washstand and looking glass, and more. These are to be authentic items from Texas between 1840 and about 1860.

     Choose one of these contribution levels, or have some fun and make up one of your own. Donations can be made "In honor of" or "In memory of" a person or family with that pioneer spirit.  Call Anita at 817-896-4280 to contribute, or send a check to SHS, Box 92825, Southlake, TX 76092. 

Sittin' on the Front Porch: $10,000 or more 

Blossom Prairie: $7,500

Powder Horn: $5,000

A Cool Breeze in July: $1,000

Mandolin: $500

Corn Dodgers: $250

Curtains at the Windows: $100

Plow and Seeds: $50

Ma's Peach Cobbler: $25