Research Notes: Using Dendrochronology to Date First-Period Houses in the Georgia Backcountry

Dendrochronology has allowed us to accurately date a large number of early houses in the Georgia backcountry for the first time, giving us a more plausible portrait of the region's early architecture and the lifestyle of its inhabitants than was previously available. In the case of individual houses, these new dates have permitted the construction of convincing narratives of properties and family histories. In turn, these narratives better align extant buildings with early descriptions by travelers in the southern backcountry. Finally, the new dates fine-tune the evolution of stylistic features and building elements, so that more accurate dating ranges are available where dendrochronology cannot be done due to cost or the condition of a building's timber.

Historically the Georgia backcountry in the period before 1820 began at Augusta and stretched northwestward up the Savannah River to the mountains and westward across the Piedmont through the river valleys of the Ogeechee, the Oconee, and parts of the Okmulgee.¹ Parts of this area near the Savannah River were settled in the colonial period, although the population in the region remained small until the end of the Revolution.² Successive treaties with Native Americans made more land available from 1791 onward.³ For the first foray using dendrochronology, the area covered stretched mainly east from Athens with a few houses north and south of the city.⁴ The heart of the region was historically referred to as the Goose Pond settlement, which included a notable influx of Virginians who settled along the Broad River in the 1780s and 1790s. These came largely from the Virginia counties of Albemarle, Amherst, Augusta, Bedford, Chesterfield, Halifax, Hanover, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Prince Edward, and Westmoreland, a broad area that stretched from the Northern Neck to the Piedmont and Southside. Besides these Virginians, the next largest group to settle the Georgia backcountry originated in North Carolina. Very few came from any other state. Before about 1810 these immigrants mostly cultivated tobacco with the center of their trade the now-submerged town of Petersburg, named after the city in the Old Dominion (Figure 1).⁵

As elsewhere in the southern backcountry, the dating of early houses in Georgia has traditionally relied on family lore and written documents, mainly deeds, tax records, and the occasional diary. However, unwritten family tradition is often faulty and early records almost always concern land, rather than structures. The date in which land was first purchased or settled also cannot be assumed to be the construction of a particular house. A second method has been onsite analysis of building technology and stylistic features. Wrought nails and strap hinges have been taken to indicate an eighteenth-century date; early cut nails and butt hinges more likely date from the early nineteenth century. Pit-sawn and hand-hewn structural timber is interpreted as very early; sash-sawn somewhat later. Stylistic elements sometimes include federal or neoclassical moldings with delicate elements or perhaps a simple, three-part federal-era mantel (see Figure 12). The problem here is that both style and technology changed slowly and inconsistently in this period, especially in the backcountry. They

Figure 1.

Map of the northern part of the early backcountry of Georgia, to about 1825, showing sites of houses tested with dendrochronology. Numbers refer to houses as listed in the appendix. Locations are the original sites in the case of houses that have been moved (numbers 1, 5, and 7). Drawn by Vineet Date.

rarely narrow down a date much beyond the half century from 1780 to 1830.

Moreover, warning signs have appeared that these dates are often inaccurate. For one thing, travelers' accounts of early Georgia and elsewhere in the southern backcountry describe a cruder housing stock than even the simplest of surviving structures. This had been noted before the Revolution but remained true long afterward, even after more settled areas had begun to improve their housing.⁶ A typical early South Carolina backcountry dwelling was described this way:

They are constructed of pine trees, cut in lengths of ten or fifteen feet...