Not far from my home here in upper Bavaria there is a Bauernhaus (farmhouse) Museum which has actual 17th-century structures open for inspection. The interiors look not unlike the picture shown with this article. An interesting feature of the German construction is that they built a single chimney for a fire in the middle of the cabin and the family would sleep right around that chimney. In my home here in Germany I have a similar arrangement with very large shelves which could accommodate people to sleep in cold weather.
The English houses on the other hand featured a chimney on either end. This is a convenient way to determine the origin of the settler by the residential architecture.
