I have just learned a most amazing new word:  dendrochronology. It’s the science of reading the growth rings of trees, the concentric circles of light and darker wood visible across the trunk of a hardwood tree when it is cut down.

‘…NO PLACE LIKE IT’ SINCE 1719-20,
Home Sweet Home, in East Hampton, NY

Each ring, expanding outward from the center of the trunk, marks the passage of one year in the life of the tree. A skilled dendrochronologist, reading those rings, can deduce an astonishing range of information, pinpointing years marked by drought, for example, or a long, wet growing season. By comparing rings with a master chronological sample from the same general area, the scientist can then nail the year and often, the very season when this tree was cut down and the wood put to use (usually right after its “felling date”) to build a structure or make paneling, doors, furniture, or the substrate for a work of art.    In some parts of the world, dendrochronologists have information enough to date a piece of wood back many thousands of years.

Why bother?  Because, as dendrochronologist Michael Worthington explains, people “love to know how old things really are.” But not only that, there’s real money involved here.

THE HOUSE THAT ROCKED THE NATION
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Josiah Henson Site (1849-50)

For example, dendrochronology can establish the date and authenticity of important paintings made on wood.  And when it comes to verifying the ages of historic structures, particularly houses, older means more valuable, especially when you’re talking really old, like the l600s and l700s.

From the Southern states on up into New England, Worthington has dated dozens of old houses, both private homes and national treasures.  Among them are historic sites like “Home Sweet Home” in East Hampton, NY (l719-20), The House of the Seven Gables in Salem, MA (Summer l666-Winter 1676-7), and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Josiah Henson Site, in Maryland (l849-50).  He also gauged the age of one of the oldest buildings in the West, the Presidio in San Francisco (l847-48).

Most notably, visitors to George Washington’s ancestral home may have seen the Oxford-educated dendrochronologist scrambling out from the lower depths of Mount Vernon. The ladies of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association (who have owned and operated the estate since they saved it in l853) had been disturbed by talk that the house wasn’t original; that George himself had demolished a much earlier structure and rebuilt Mount Vernon in 1759, after marrying Martha.

George Washington’s Beloved Mount Vernon
Traced Back to l732

But Worthington to the rescue, aided by his archaeologist wife Jane Seiter, Ph.D., an expert in the colonial period. Getting to the bottom of the worried Ladies’ question literally, they bored into the oak framing under the present-day Mount Vernon.  And according to the structural wood Worthington sampled and analyzed, Mount Vernon officially dates to as early as l732.

Thanks to dendrochronology, we understand yet another reason humankind has loved hardwood down through the centuries.  Warm, durable, and beautiful, hardwood is also reliable and true.

Really now, would George Washington’s wood dare tell a lie?