DONLEY CABIN

John Donley's historical family cabin. Black and white image of an old wooden log cabin with icicles hanging from the roof, surrounded by leafless trees and snow on the ground.

My great-great-grandfather John Donley and his two brothers built this log cabin near Lenox, Michigan in the 1850s after fleeing Ireland in the potato famine. The cabin deteriorated over time and, by the early 1900s, was occupied mostly by hired hands and sheep. In 1932, my grandfather Hugh Donley lost his job at a Detroit auto parts company, returned to the farm and lived in the 16-by-20-foot cabin with his wife Frances and seven children for most of the Depression. In the late 1960s, my parents and Uncle Larry Donley led a major restoration of the cabin at its original location on the farm. But after an arsonist nearly destroyed the cabin in 1996, we jacked up the cabin and moved it to a nearby historical village run by the Richmond Area Historical & Genealogical Society (RAHGS).

John Donley- Large truck transporting a wooden log cabin with a person working on the roof and another standing nearby.

In 2019, forty-five descendants from three generations of the Donley family contributed $150,000 to replace the fire-damaged roof, repair rotted logs, and create a fund managed by RAHGS to maintain the cabin in perpetuity. Then in 2022, the family presented RAHGS with replicas of two vital parts of the cabin’s history: the family dining table used since the 1880s, reproduced in perfect detail by Andrew Donley Robb, and a Farmall H tractor identical to one that Inez Cantrell used her life savings to purchase for the Donley family in 1946.

John Donley and large family group posing in front of an old log cabin with a sign indicating "Michigan Centennial Farm." The group includes adults and children, and they are smiling in sunny weather.
John Donley- Partially constructed log cabin with a yellow backhoe in front, on a dirt lot
John Donley. Three men smiling in front of a log cabin under construction, with a railroad crossing sign nearby, on a sunny day.

VIDEOS

Collage titled "The Donley Cabin Through the Years" John Donley

Courtesy of Rich Weinert, RAHGS