Clues

What Year was this Built?

How old is Stonehenge?

Conventional wisdom says Stonehenge was constructed sometime between 3000 and 2000 BC, with radiocarbon dating placing some of the early stones at around 2400 BC. But which year, specifically? Without verbal histories passed down through time, detailed written records, or empirical evidence such as construction methods and materials, it is just not possible to say with any degree of certainty.

We have faced a similar challenge in determining the vintage of our house, and what we had assumed to be a simple question has taken months of part-time research and a number of sources of information to come up with a theory. Over the next few posts, we will share the journey, and the conclusions we have reached.

Shoes We Did Not Find

Larner-Jones House isn't as old as Stonehenge, and we probably aren't going to carbon date the floor. Nonetheless, as with many old houses, determining the date of construction isn't as easy as one might expect. When we purchased the property, we took the listing at face value, specifying the year of construction as 1852. It has become clear that the question of its age is far more complex than it seems at first, and the listing is not nearly the only clue as to the actual date of construction.

To begin with, there are a number of empirical features of the house that would in fact support a construction date of 1852. We had hoped to find an old shoe inside a wall during the renovation, which was customarily placed to ward off evil spirits, but we sadly came up empty on that front. Instead we were left with other aspects of the materials and methods which provided some insight into the age of the property.

First, there is the style of the house, being of a simple Italianate country design. As covered in a previous post, the Italianate style was used extensively in the 1850s-1860s, and was arguably the most popular style of the times. Its influence waned a bit after the Civil War, in favor of Stick, Queen Anne and Shingle style designs. From this standpoint, the style of the house would support a construction date of 1852, but by itself really is about as useful as the Stonehenge date ranges mentioned previously.

Old Nails

Second, as has been mentioned in previous posts the house is constructed with a balloon framing technique. This method of construction was introduced in the US in the 1830s, and had become the dominant approach by the 1890s. Another data point that supports the theory of an 1852 date, but not itself a confirmation either. The framing is put together with cut nails, an innovation of the 1820s that replaced wrought-iron nails. The advent of cut nails in fact allowed balloon framing to become emergent over the more complicated timber framing approach, which required a higher degree of craftsmanship. The topic of nail technology is an interesting post on this blog about an old house in Exeter, MA.

Third, as part of our renovation we have restored the original windows that remained in the old part of the house. All of the windows, save one, were of a rudimentary design with slides and pins that would hold them open. One window used the "newer technology" of a weight and pulley system that could maintain a number of open positions without slamming closed. From talking with our window contractor, who sees a lot of old houses, this design of window fits with an 1850s construction period, but, as with the other details, isn't prescriptive. It appears no manufacturers of the era stamped or otherwise marked the windows they made either.

Finally, the most interesting bit of evidence was uncovered when the addition was removed. At the rear corner of the house at the roof line, an old six by six beam was added to support the roof structure. Clearly stenciled on the beam in black paint is the word "Libbey".

It Says Libbey on the Label

This was a relatively cool discovery, because it was about the only thing we could find in the original construction materials that had any sort of labeling. Through the magic of Google's eBook library, we were able to dig up news of a Washington-based lumber company by the name of Libbey in the May, 1918 edition of the Oregon-based magazine, The Timberman.

In addition, there are records in the Library of Congress regarding a historic Georgetown house owned by the Libbey family:

We think it is highly likely that the lumber in our house, or some of it anyway, came from this very lumber company based in Georgetown, which was originally founded in 1829. Certainly interesting, but given that the company was in business throughout most of the 1800s, this "discovery" is not particularly useful in proving any particular construction date either.

Basically, any of the direct evidence we might have gotten from the materials and physical structure itself just isn't very useful in pinning down a construction year for Larner-Jones House. This approach failing us, we turned to any written records or anecdotes we could find to try and pin things down, which is the subject for our next post.