On the lea of Flint Hill, just below the village, are eight structures serving the needs of the pioneer farm family. The squared oak timbers of the one-room log cabin were laid in 1806 by Nicholas Hetchler, who first settled in the Genesee Country in 1787. Dovetail joints where the timbers overlap at the corners are typical of log house construction in Hetchler's native southern Pennsylvania. A portion of one wall of solid stone masonry that provides a fireproof back for the clay fire hearth is characteristic of other early log cabins in the Genesee Country, as is the clay-lined wooden chimney.

Carving a farm from a wilderness, the settler used his ax to clear the native forest. Logs not needed to build his cabin could be burned to give him his first cash crop — wood ashes from which he could prepare potash. Grain could be sown between the stumps. With a snug cabin, enough plain food for his family, some winter feed for his livestock and a little cash to buy the essentials he could not produce himself, the pioneer farmer in the Genesee Country had made a modest beginning.

The cabin was presented to the museum by Arthur Burns, whose family had occupied it for nearly a century in its original location just outside the village of Scottsville, N.Y. The excellent condition of the logs results from their long confinement within either frame additions to the cabin or clapboards applied to the exposed exterior walls.

Contemporary accounts and inventories of similar cabins document the simple furnishings with which the cabin has been provided. Open-hearth cooking and other food preparations are demonstrated daily in the pioneer cabin during the museum season. Visitors will also find typical farm animals — chickens, pigs, and cows — running freely or secured in pens that were part of the farmstead.