Dendrochronological dating of historic log cabins on the Belle Meade Plantation, Davidson County, Tennessee, USA

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.