In July 2014, a fire damaged Rebel’s Rest, one of the oldest buildings on Sewanee’s campus. Though the fire’s destruction made restoration impossible, Sewanee professors and students launched a remarkable interdisciplinary project that recovered about 70 percent of the square-cut logs in the building’s outer walls. The surplus materials from this historic curation project are now being sold at auction.

The online auction will be managed by McLemore Auction Company <https://www.mclemoreauction.com/auction/3054/item/historic-reclaimed-lumber-and-architectural-features-from-rebel39s-rest-at-the-university-of-the-south-in-sewanee-tn-556278/;. Bidding will run through Oct. 30. This auction will offer a rare opportunity to preserve Mountain-grown materials that have held Sewanee’s story from the University’s earliest days and give the new owner an opportunity to reimagine one of Sewanee’s oldest stories.

An historic cabin that was originally built in 1866, Rebel’s Rest hosted the first meeting of the Board of Regents to organize the University after the Civil War. It also served as the University’s original post office and supply store, as well as an early fraternity house. Most recently before the fire, it hosted visitors as the University’s guest house.

Following the fire, the building’s site was transformed into a living laboratory to support student and faculty research into the region’s history, forests and climates. Notable projects included:

Sewanee professors and students deconstructed, mapped, and analyzed the structure’s materials, confirming that the more than 600 oak, American chestnut, and tulip poplar framing timbers began growing on or near the Domain as early as 1645.

Teams from Sewanee and other institutions conducted hands-on archeological research on the site, recovering more than 10,000 items—objects ranging from toys to medicine bottles, to extensive fragments of porcelain, pottery, and colored glass—that revealed evidence of daily life on the Mountain over the structure’s 152-year lifespan.

All timber samples with research value are being retained for future study. This ensures the wood continues to yield important insights about the impacts of human development and climate change on some of North America’s most significant hardwood forestlands.

Long-term uses for the site are still being explored. The building’s stone foundation and deteriorating pergola will be dismantled, and the remaining outbuilding on the site will be moved and considered for an alternative and meaningful future use. Other interim plans include developing a native pollinator garden and planting trees of the same species used in the home, including an experimental disease-resistant variety of American chestnut, in hopes of restoring a species that has been virtually extinct on the Mountain and across the U.S. since the 1920s.

This auction is designed to allow these materials to take on new usefulness in the historic wood restoration market, as mantels, flooring, or part of a new cabin. The sale of beams with such unique histories and documented provenance ensures that these elements of Sewanee’s past can find new life in the future.

Go to <https://new.sewanee.edu/news/rebels-rest-salvaged-materials/; for more information.