Boles-Aiken Log Cabin

Boles-Aiken Log Cabin. . The cabin discovered in 1986 inside a house being torn down on Center Circle in Salado may have been a stage stop, a resting place for drivers and horses, a post office, a school, before becoming hidden walls in a residence. Research led by Salado Historical Society and the Texas Historical Commission provided few fragments. Salado Historical Society rescued, restored, and continues to maintain the cabin built during the 1850's Bowles (family spelling) ownership or earlier squatter's rights of the family., Benjamin Bowles, born 1785, married 1810, Elizabeth Jefferies, in Kentucky, moved to Missouri, and finally, in 1827, to Texas with 5 daughters, 2 sons, and their Uncle Henry Smith, first American Governor of Texas, 1835. Oral family tradition ties Benjamin Bowles to Scot-Cherokee Chief Bowles (1756-1839), who was killed in Republic of Texas Battle of Neches., With Brazoria and Bastrop counties choice locations, the Lost Pines section of Bastrop was site of a league of land claimed by Benjamin Bowles in 1831 before his untimely death in 1832, contributed to the loss of the land. The site of the cabin, a labor of land in Salado, 1850, last land for heirs of Bowles, was purchased from them, 1859-60 by Herman Aiken who, in the last months of his life, transferred one-half of it to Salado College Trustees and surveyed for sale the other half for town lots, a joint project for college and town initiated by the 1859 gift of 100 acres by Elijah Sterling Clack Robertson.