Smokehouse

      This Smokehouse in its exceptionally good condition is unparallel anywhere in representing original and true construction of the early 1800's.  Only the roof (currently tin) and the weatherboard have been replaced. The exterior measurement are 12′4″ x 12′ 4″ with a center height from ground of 17′9″. From ground to roofline is 9′10″. The roof rafters' extent out 6″ on two sides. The roof angle is steep at 50º. The door is a large beaded batten one with hand made wrought nails (rose head) used for clinching. It has a large stock-lock (wooden lock) dated ca. 1800 as per the managing blacksmiths at Williamsburg (Pete Ross and Ken Schwarz) who had just made a smaller version for Monticello. When one walks into the interior of this building, the smoke blacken framing and very wide roofing boards shows its use over the years. The one-foot square hand hewn sills sit upon 8″ of local field stones (red rocks) foundation, which has been dry laid. The large foundation sills (12″x12″) are placed together not with the normal half lap joint but with mortise and tenon joints with a large tree-nails (pegs). The 4-corner posts are 8″ hand hewn L shaped. They also fit into sill with mortise and tenon joints and also tie in with the plate in same manner. The hand-hewn knee braces (8″x 4″) are mortise and tenon to the sill and the post. All together there are 27 visible tree- nails (pegs), and 98 joints (mortise and tenon, tongue and fork, collar tie, and pinned tenon joints). The roofing boards, rafters, and studs were all saw milled with reciprocal saw (sash saw).  In this area, this type of sawmill was generally attached to gristmill and the earliest dates to 1795. The sills, kneeboards, and beams were all hand-hewn. The early machine made nails, stock-lock, L shaped corner post, and saw marks show that it was probably built between 1800 and 1830. Without a study of the wood (dendrochronology) it's impossible to date exactly the smokehouse. This small building is extraordinary in that the interior visually exemplifies early handmade craftsmanship, particularly the number and kinds of joints that cannot be seen anywhere else on the plantation.

  To fully appreciate the magnificent historical  significance of the construction of this building, one must understand the type of antiquated hand tools required to do the task and the skills needed to utilize them. The old pines used in these building have been depleted in the United States since the early 1930's. They would have been cut down with a hand forged felling axe, squared by the broad axe, smoothed with a adz, framing lengths cut with a framed-bow crosscut saw, put on a logging sled and then dragged by horse or oxen to a location where it would be stacked in the shade for slow air curing. A few of the tools used to make the mortise and tenon joints were, marking gauge, mortising gauge, hand-wrought steel drawing knives, augers, chisels, wooden mallets, squares, and drift wedges. The tools to make the pegs (treenails) are the froe, wooden mallet, drawknife, and shaving horse. A large majority of these tools are not used today and the knowledge of when and how to use these antique tools has generally disappeared. The balance of the wood came from the water-powered sawmill. This mill used a blade that went up and down to cut the logs and the saw marks are in a straight line and are of near equal distance from each other. This type of mill discontinued in this area around 1850 when the circular saw blade was introduced. The nails used were made of iron and not of steel as today. The early hand wrought nails had a lot of impurities in the iron due to the manufacturing process of the metal. These impurities protected the nail from rusting, make the iron soft and produced a grain structure. The nails in the batten door are hand made wrought nails with rose heads and flat ends. Because these nails would clinch better than the early machine made cut nails, they were used for this purpose until the 1830's. The remainder of the nails found in the Smokehouse was the early machine made cut nails.  Even though this type was made in the United States in the 1790's, I found no evidence that they were in this area until 1811.Because of the grain structure, shear marks, points and other factors showing in the nails, they were made in early 1800 up to 1830's.