The Harley Clark house on route US 23 at Esserville was built about 1840 or before. It was originally a rectangular log building, two story, two rooms upstairs and two down. These rooms are separated in the center by a stone chimney about six feet wide. On the west side of the chimney the six foot wide space is utilized as a closet, and the east side has a stairway leading up to the second story from the porch. The original four rooms are about 18 by 20 feet. The house is made of hewn yellow poplar logs, dobbed and chinked. The
first floor in this house was wide yellow poplar plants sawed by the rip saw method. About 1860, James F. Wells had the two west rooms and the east room downstairs ceiled with yellow poplar ceiling sawed by the ripsaw method and matched six inches in width. The windows in the east rooms were put in with sash glass and well cased in 1860. The windows in the original part have twelve panes each. Six to each sash. Panes 8 x 10 inches. The two front entrances are plain, three paneled type doors, varnished. The stairway had neither
baluster or handrail. The two rooms upstairs are ceiled in the arch fashion, about eleven feet high in the center and about seven at the lowest point. This house was weatherboarded and two rooms built to the rear about
1895, thus, making it now an "L" shaped house. Weatherboarding plain unbeaded type. The two rear rooms share framed and weatherboarded, each room about twelve by fourteen with four paneled doors and four pane
windows, each pane 12 x 24 inches. Uniform, narrow oak flooring and ceiling. The flooring now in the original part of the house is narrow, matched oak. Each room has a chair rail about six inches wide. 
     All cornices are of wood. The two downstairs rooms have four windows each, all others have two. All doors have the common iron hinge, with outside iron locks. The front of the house has a two story porch extending the length of the house with the plain square columns and small square balusters on the upper porch. The rear part of the house has a one story porch running the length of the "L" with small round columns. The chimney, after it passes the top of the house, is of brick, the common bond type. The two downstairs rooms had original fireplaces about five feet wide, but have been converted into grates since the coming of coal. No fireplaces or grates in the upper two rooms. The roof is the gabled type, formerly covered with yellow poplar shingles dressed with a drawing knife by hand, composition roof now.

     This place was first owned by Andrew Jackson Dotson. James F. Wells acquired it before the Civil War and it stayed in the Wells Family possession till about eight years ago. Then it was sold to Lee Kilgore another descendant of James F. Wells and Kilgore sold to Harley Clark.