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Dendrochronological dating of the chief john ross house, rossville, Georgia
Abstract
The Chief John Ross House is a two-story oak (Quercus spp.) and eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana L.) log structure located in downtown Rossville, Georgia. The log structure was reportedly built in 1797 by John McDonald, grandfather of Chief John Ross, for his Cherokee bride. This construction date first emerged in the 1950s, when efforts were underway to save the structure. Historical documents, however, indicate that the structure did not exist until 1816. Ross lived at the structure until 1828, when he was elected the last principal chief of the Cherokee before the tribe’s forced removal during the Trail of Tears. Using dendroarchaeological techniques, 28 archaeological (increment) cores were removed from the oak portion of the structure in 2007 to verify the construction date. Cores were processed and dated using the white oak (Quercus alba L.) Piney Creek Pocket Wilderness, Tennessee chronology. Of the 28 cores, 22 (from 19 trees) yielded cutting dates clustered around the winter of 1816-17, indicating the structure likely was not built by McDonald. This construction date does, however, make it possible for Chief John Ross himself to have been the builder. This correction to history should increase public attention and preservation efforts at the structure.
... A number of historical dendroarchaeology studies have been carried out in the Southeast (e.g., Stahle, 1979;Bortolot et al., 2001;Grissino-Mayer, 2009;Henderson et al., 2009;Grissino-Mayer et al., 2010;Therrell and Stahle, 2012). Neighboring states such as Tennessee in particular (Grissino-Mayer and van de Gevel, 2007;Lewis et al., 2009;Schneider et al., 2015;Slayton et al., 2009;Stachowiak et al., 2016Stachowiak et al., , 2014 and to a lesser extent Florida (Garland et al., 2012;Grissino-Mayer et al., 2010) and Georgia (DeWeese et al., 2015;Wight and Grissino-Mayer, 2004) have been the focus of projects to date historical wooden structures, but to our knowledge no such studies have been undertaken in Alabama. Dendroarchaeology is particularly relevant in the southeast given the large number of historical-era wooden structures in the region as well as wooden components of Native American structures. ...
Tree-ring dating has been applied to three historical log buildings in northeastern Alabama to determine if any of the structures could have been associated with historic Fort Armstrong. Fort Armstrong was constructed near Cedar Bluff, Alabama by militia members under the ultimate command of Andrew Jackson to support actions against the “Red Stick” faction of Creeks during the First Creek War in 1813. Comparison of tree-ring samples from the structures with reference chronologies from nearby living trees strongly indicates that none of the three buildings was constructed prior to about 1849 and therefore could not have been contemporaneous with Fort Armstrong. However, the dating does indicate that the buildings are Antebellum in age and were very likely constructed as part of the early development of Snow Hill Plantation. As such these structures provide insight into the physical and cultural patterns of an early Alabama plantation. We believe that this project represents the first dendroarchaeological research reported from Alabama.
... This value also is comparable to those found in previous studies for oak from historic structures in the Southeast, e.g. 0.21 (Henderson et al., 2009), 0.21 (DeWeese et al., 2012), 0.22 (Mann et al., 2009), and 0.18 (Blankenship et al., 2009). Overall, the 29 series in this dataset displayed sufficient metrics that suggested a strong overarching climate signal appropriate for successful crossdating with reference data sets (Table 2). ...
... Hillam, 1992;Baillie, 1995;Hillam and Groves, 1996;Hurni and Orcel, 1996). Dendroarchaeology has also often been applied to dating the years trees were harvested and subsequently used to build historic-period (post-AD 1600) structures in the eastern US (Grissino-Mayer and van de Gevel, 2007;Harley et al., 2011;DeWeese et al., 2012;Grissino-Mayer et al., 2012;Therrell and Stahle, 2012). Numerous studies have also demonstrated that early Euro-American settlement structures can be dated via tree rings in the American Southwest (e.g. ...
Letchworth State Park in Castile, New York, maintains the Caneadea Council House, the Nancy Jemison Cabin, and Thomas “Buffalo Tom” Jemison Cabin, all built in Seneca communities along the Genesee River valley in the early 19th century. Dendrochronological analysis of samples from these structures has provided a more precise construction date of ca. 1820 for the council house, significantly later than the 1759–1780 range derived from historical documents. However, the results support the historical construction dates of around 1800 for the Nancy Jemison Cabin and ca. 1818 for the Thomas Jemison Cabin. Applying K. Jordan’s (2008) intercultural/creolized type and Brown’s (2000) “Reservation Log House” type along with the lens of hybridity elucidates how the council house and cabins relate to Seneca decisions to incorporate principles of European-style log construction into their longhouse and other building forms in adaptation to their more confined territory and increased European American settlement and infrastructure building at that time.
The lands including Cave Spring and most of northwest Georgia were held by the Cherokee until Cherokee removal in 1838. In 2010, a two-story pine structure that was encased inside the Green Hotel in downtown Cave Spring, Georgia, was revealed during renovation. Local Cave Spring historians insist the log structure was built by Avery Vann in 1810, making it a Cherokee structure. However, the Gold Lottery maps of 1832 show no structure on lot 871, which today contains the Green Hotel. A construction date also cannot be verified by historical documents, maps, or artifacts discovered around the Green Hotel. The purpose of this research was to determine the construction date of the Green Hotel log structure. Archaeological dating of the window glass thickness of the hotel gave dates of 1810 or 1823. However, the dendroarchaeological dating of the wood indicates cutting dates during the late spring/early summer of 1839. This would indicate that the log structure inside the Green Hotel was not built by Avery Vann or any Cherokee, but by later Euro-American settlers.
Dendroarchaeology has been an invaluable resource in aiding management agencies with data that can authenticate or contest traditional dates of construction for historic log structures. Tipton-Haynes is a well-documented state historic site in East Tennessee with two log structures thought to be constructed by its original occupant, Colonel John Tipton, in the late eighteenth century. To examine the landscape history of the site, these structures were dated using dendrochronology to contextualize the built environment over time. Structures include a renovated log cabin that stands as the core of a Greek-Revival farmhouse and a double-pen log corn crib. Results of the analysis show that the Tipton farmhouse was constructed in 1799 to serve as a retirement residence with renovations occurring shortly after 1821 by John Tipton, Jr., while the corn crib was constructed by Landon Haynes in 1851 during an expansion of farm production on the site. Our study contextualized the provenience of these structures over time which allowed us to recognize why these changes took place on the landscape and under whose ownership these changes occurred. Such dendroarchaeological studies provide a deeper understanding of the history of construction of historic sites in Tennessee and the Southeastern U.S. in general, helping historians, historical architects, and historical agencies more accurately interpret and understand the value of our historic resources.
The Harding Cabin is a one and one half story, double pen log cabin located on the Belle Meade Plantation in Davidson County, Tennessee, USA. Historical accounts attribute the eastern cabin to Daniel Dunham who originally settled in the area ca. 1780 and the western cabin to John Harding who purchased the land from the Dunham family in February 1807. We used dendrochronological dating techniques to determine the years of harvest for trees cut and used to build both cabins. We found that both cabins were predominantly made from two genera not commonly used to build log cabins in the southeastern U.S., Fraxinus (ash) and Ulmus (elm). We obtained ring width measurements from 30 cores from all walls on both cabins and used graphical and statistical techniques to crossdate the tree-ring series and create floating chronologies for both species. We crossdated these with reference chronologies from the ITRDB. The Fraxinus chronology was dated from 1657 to 1805 while the Ulmus chronology was dated from 1583 to 1805. Cutting dates indicated that most if not all trees used to build both cabins were cut in late winter/early spring of 1807 before the trees had broken dormancy. We propose that both cabins were built the same year but by different families. We propose that the Harding family built the eastern cabin while Harding’s slaves built the western cabin, originally at a different location on the property. Once the mansion was completed by 1820, the slave cabin was relocated beside the Harding cabin.
Tree rings of eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana L.) were examined from cores extracted from two log cabins located at the Wynnewood State Historic Site in Castalian Springs, Sumner County, Tennessee. One cabin was reportedly built by the first explorer in the area, Isaac Bledsoe, sometime between 1772 and his death in 1793. The second cabin was known as Spencer's Cabin after the first settler of the region, Thomas Sharp Spencer, who lived in the immediate vicinity from 1776 to 1779. The goal of this research was to determine the probable construction year(s) for both cabins and determine whether Bledsoe and Spencer did indeed build these structures. Forty-one cores were extracted from Bledsoe's Cabin, and 30 were used for crossdating and building a floating chronology using COFECHA. The Bledsoe's Cabin chronology was then statistically and graphically crossdated using the eastern red cedar reference tree-ring chronology (ITRDB #TN031) from Norris Dam, Tennessee. We found a statistically significant correlation (r = 0.42, t = 4.18, n = 85, p < 0.0001) between the Bledsoe's Cabin chronology and the reference chronology, anchoring the chronology between 1720 and 1804, with nearly all cores indicating tree harvesting between February and April 1805. Twenty-two cores were extracted from Spencer's Cabin, and 17 were used to build a floating chronology for the cabin. Again, we found a statistically significant correlation (r = 0.44, t = 4.85, n = 100, p < 0.00001) with the reference chronology which anchored the Spencer's Cabin chronology between 1726 and 1825. All trees appear to have been harvested between February and August in 1826. Therefore, neither structure was built by its historical namesake. No known historical documents suggest who the potential builders were, although the property was owned between ca. 1797 and 1826 by General James Winchester. He and his family, however, never resided on the Wynnewood property because Winchester had built a large multi-room structure in nearby Gallatin, Tennessee by 1802.
We examined tree rings from cross-sections of shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata Mill.) timbers extracted from a house in Forsyth County, Georgia, that was reportedly built in the mid-19th Century during the Antebellum Period (pre-1860). Our goals were to (1) determine the probable construction year for the house to help assess its possible historical significance, and (2) create a new long-term reference chronology for the northern Georgia area where such chronologies are lacking. Sections of shortleaf pine were removed from the structure during a renovation project in 2001. Sixteen sections were used to build a floating tree- ring chronology 217 years in length from series that crossdated conclusively with other series both graph- ically via skeleton plots and statistically via COFECHA. We then statistically evaluated the probable ab- solute temporal placement of this chronology using several regional tree-ring chronologies from the south- eastern U.S. A statistically significant (p , 0.0001) correlation between our chronology and a shortleaf pine chronology from Clemson, South Carolina, anchors our chronology between 1652-1868. Two missing rings are probable in the early portion of our chronology, but we currently do not have a sufficient number of samples to conclusively identify their exact placement. No cluster of outermost rings was found to support the reported construction date of 1851, although the outermost rings on 13 of 16 samples dated before 1851. This new chronology could aid further dating of wood from archaeological sites and historical structures, and establish an initial data set that could eventually provide important new insights about the climate of northern Georgia during the 17th-19th Centuries.
The Rocky Mount site has important historical and cultural significance for the State of Tennessee because it was built by one of its earliest settlers and served as the capital of the territory from 1790 to 1792. Questions arose concerning whether the two main log structures - known as the Cobb House with adjoining dining room - were built by William Cobb between 1770 and 1772. The authors used tree-ring dating to determine the year(s) of construction of these two log structures. Three nearby reference tree-ring chronologies anchored the Rocky Mount tree-ring chronology from 1667 to 1829. Cutting dates obtained from 19 logs revealed that the Cobb House was built beginning in 1827 and finished by 1828, while the dining room was begun in 1829 and finished by 1830. An additional six logs had outermost dates between 1820 and 1825. These 25 logs demonstrate, instead, that Michael Massengill constructed the house and dining room between 1827 and 1830.
Four types of error are commonly associated with the basic problem of the time relationship that exists between the date of a tree-ring specimen and the archaeological manifestation being dated. These errors may sometimes be discovered and amended by using the clustering of dates and the clustering of archaeological traits. A secondary problem arises when lost exterior rings produce non-cutting dates in contrast to cutting dates. Tree-ring data may also be employed in deriving information of a non-chronological nature.
In recent decades, agencies charged with managing historic structures and sites have found dendroarchaeological studies increasingly valuable, given the ability of such studies to verify (or refute) accepted dates of construction. The Ximenez-Fatio House has well-documented historical and cultural significance for the state of Florida, as it is one of St. Augustine's oldest, best-preserved, and most studied historic properties. According to documentary sources, the two-story coquina-stone main house was reportedly built around 1797-1798, and included a one-story wing of warehouses, giving the house a distinctive "L" shape. Documentary evidence also suggests that a second story was added above the wing sometime between 1830 and 1842. However, after Studying the building fabric itself, historical architects now believe the entire wing of the house was remodeled two decades later in the 1850s. Our goals were to: (1) determine the probable construction years for the original house and wing using tree-ring dating techniques, and (2) verify the probable construction year for the remodeling that occurred in the wing section of the house. A total of 74 core samples were extracted from longleaf pine (Pinus palustris P. Miller) timbers used to construct the house. Twenty-six were confidently crossdated both visually and statistically against each other to produce a 185-year floating tree-ring chronology. A statistically significant (p < 0.0001) correlation between our chronology and a longleaf pine chronology from Lake Louise, Georgia, anchors our chronology between 1673 and 1857. No cutting dates were obtained from the main house, but the lack of my tree rings that post-date 1798 supports the 1797 construction date. Furthermore, cutting dates obtained from beams in the first-floor wing revealed that the extensive remodeling of the wing likely occurred in the period 1856 to 1858 soon after the house had been purchased by Louisa Fatio in 1855.
COFECHA is a computer program that assesses the quality of crossdating and measurement accuracy of tree-ring series. Written by Richard L. Holmes in 1982, the program has evolved into one of the most important and widely used in dendrochronology. It is important to note that COFECHA does not perform all the necessary steps in crossdating. Rather, the program is a tool that helps the dendrochronologist assess the quality of crossdating and measurement accuracy. The ultimate decision whether or not a tree-ring series is successfully crossdated must lie with the dendrochronologist and not with the software. Therefore, the program is most useful after initial crossdating is accomplished using visual or graphical techniques (such as skeleton plots), and the rings have been measured. The proper use of COFECHA adds a high degree of confidence that tree-ring samples have been crossdated correctly and measured accurately, ensuring that the environmental signal is maximized. In this paper, I describe the use of COFECHA through all necessary steps, and discuss the meaning of the initial questions posed at program start-up, the various options available in the main menu, the various sections of the output from COFECHA, and interpretation of the diagnostics of crossdating and measurement accuracy. I demonstrate methods used to help crossdate undated series, and offer tips on taking full advantage of the various options available in the program.
The authors begin by outlining the role of the dendrochronologists both in the field and in the laboratory. The basic principles of tree-ring dating are then explained in detail, followed by a guide to the collection of archaeological and modern specimens from the field. The final section deals with the laboratory techniques used: the preliminary processing and preparation of archaeological and modern specimens; the process of dating specimens; and finally the compilation of a master chronology.
During the historic mining episodes at Cagle Saltpetre Cave, wooden leaching vats needed for the lixiviation of calcium nitrate from mined sediments (from which saltpeter was then produced) were constructed and used in the cave. When mining operations ceased, these features were abandoned and preserved in situ, some remaining virtually intact. Their remarkable preservation enabled tree-ring dating of timbers associated with these vats to be accomplished. Tree rings from oak planks used in the construction of the leaching vats were measured to 0.001 mm precision on a Velmex measuring system. Using COFECHA software, we crossdated the measurement series to both the Norris Dam State Park and Piney Creek Pocket Wilderness white oak reference chronologies, spanning the years from 1633 to 1982, obtained from the International Tree-Ring Data Bank. Graphical comparisons via scatter plots were inspected to ensure correct temporal placements. The final chronology developed from 39 dated series correlated very highly with the Norris Dam State Park reference chronology (r = 0.49, n = 170 yrs, t = 7.29, p < 0.0001) and verified that our site chronology extends from 1692 to 1861 The results of our analyses indicate that saltpeter was mined and processed at the site during separate episodes throughout the 19th Century. Additionally, saltpeter-processing technology changed throughout the course of the mining operations.
Dendroarchaeology has a discontinuous history in the Southeastern United States, mostly because of misconceptions (the Southeast is too mesic), bad sampling practices (no standard protocol exists for preserving prehistoric wood samples), and a lack of reference tree-ring chronologies long enough to date wood from the abundant prehistoric sites. The majority of archaeological applications in recent years has focused on the dating of historic sites and structures to verify the documented year(s) of construction largely in response to requests from historical agencies to verify when a particular structure was built. We have found that most structures are one to two generations younger than their reported date(s) of construction, but most agencies find this information useful as tree-ring dating lends historical credibility to any site. The future of dendroarchaeology in the Southeast is encouraging but many more trained experts are needed to meet the demand of dating historical structures and sites. Furthermore, once a sampling protocol becomes standardized for retrieving wood from prehistoric sites, the potential for absolute dating of these sites is enormous given that abundant wood is archived in locations throughout the Southeast.
The Marble Springs homestead in south Knox County serves as a significant heritage site for the state of Tennessee because it was the final home of one of our nation's most important founding statesmen and first governor of Tennessee (1796 to 1801, 1803 to 1809), John Sevier. Recent archaeological and historical research had called into question the authenticity of the original John Sevier log cabin located at the Marble Springs homestead. We used tree-ring dating to determine the year(s) of construction of the Governor John Sevier cabin and the adjacent Walker Springs log cabin (which had been relocated to the site later and has no ties to Gov. John Sevier) by first extracting cores from all accessible logs in the cabins and then evaluating the cutting dates of these logs. A nearby reference chronology at Norris Dam anchored the Gov. John Sevier cabin chronology from 1720 to 1834 and the Walker Springs cabin chronology from 1675 to 1826. The cutting dates obtained from six logs in the Gov. John Sevier cabin suggest construction of the cabin was completed sometime between late 1835 and early 1836. We were able to date cores from 29 logs from the Walker Springs cabin, which strongly support final construction between late 1827 to early 1828. Our dendrochronological analyses suggest that the cabin at Marble Springs long thought to be the original cabin occupied by Gov. John Sevier was instead likely built during the occupancy of the property by a later tenant, George Kirby, in the early to mid-1830s, well after the death of Sevier in 1815.
The Hoskins House is a two-story, single pen log structure located in Tannenbaum Historic Park, Greensboro, North Carolina. The house is thought to have been built by Joseph Hoskins, who lived in Guilford County from 1778 until his death in 1799. Previous archaeological testing of soil around the house yielded over 1000 artifacts, and the ceramics of these gave a Mean Ceramic Date (MCD) of 1810 as a possible initial year of construction. Our objective was to date the outermost rings on as many logs as were accessible in the Hoskins House to determine the year or range of years when the house was likely built. We compared 37 ring-width measurement series from 28 white oak group logs with a composite reference chronology created from three oak reference chronologies from Virginia. We found that the logs were cut over a 3-year period from 1811 to 1813, lending credence to the initial MCD of 1810. Joseph Hoskins had already passed away in 1799 and the property was deeded to his two sons, Joseph and Ellis. Ellis Hoskins eventually was later deeded sole possession of the property. The two-story log house located at Tannenbaum Historic Park may be more correctly called the “Ellis Hoskins House” rather than the “Joseph Hoskins House.”
Alfred Jackson was an enslaved African American born on The Hermitage plantation (outside Nashville, Tennessee) of President Andrew Jackson around 1810, and lived most of his life on the plantation. Staff from The Hermitage wished to better understand and interpret lifeways of those once enslaved on the plantation, but the date of construction of Alfred's Cabin first had to be determined. Was it built when Alfred was enslaved or was a freedman? We extracted nearly 100 core samples from eastern red cedar logs used to construct the cabin. Of these, 39 cores were used to develop a master tree-ring chronology for the cabin. Crossdating of the Alfred's Cabin chronology was accomplished using an eastern red cedar chronology developed by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Tree-Ring Laboratory at Columbia University in Palisades, New York. The 39 series from Alfred's Cabin resulted in a high-quality master tree-ring chronology, with an average inter-series correlation of 0.66 and an average mean sensitivity of 0.28. Graphical (skeleton plot and line plot) comparison and statistical crossdating with COFECHA anchored the Alfred's Cabin chronology firmly between 1749 and 1842 (r = 0.45, n = 94 yrs, t = 4.83, p < 0.0001). Cutting dates of these 39 trees ranged from 1841 to 1843. This latter date indicates that the final trees used to construct the cabin were harvested in spring or early summer of 1843, with final construction of Alfred's Cabin occurring soon after.
Dendroclimatological techniques were used to assess the limitations of climate to the tree-ring growth of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) and shortleaf pine (P. echinata Mill.) at two sites in central North Carolina. The climatic influence on tree-ring growth was determined from regression analysis of mean monthly climate and standardized tree-ring widths. Climate accounted for 20–40% of the variation in the standardized tree-ring widths of the two species. The results suggested that climate of the early and late growing seasons provided the most consistent influences to cambial growth in this region. Radial growth was most strongly related to 3 parameters of annual climate: (1) days-with-rain in September through November of previous growth-year (negative influence on growth); (2) cumulative mean monthly air temperature in March through May (positive); and (3) estimated September soil water content (positive).A preliminary examination of potential mean climatic limitations to growth successfully predicted two growth-sensitive climatic variables (2 and 3 above). However, not all ‘normal’ annual climatic limitations were sensitive predictors of growth. This indicated that (a) climatic variations which influence year-to-year variations in growth are not always the most severe seasonal stresses, and (b) indirect and time-delayed effects (1 above) are important considerations in predicting the effects of climate on growth.
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Submitted to the National Park Service and the John Ross House Association, Inc. Contract No. H7700044103. Copies available through the Trail of Tears Association
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- Joseph P Henderson
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