The Tree-Ring Dating of Ironworkers’ Houses at Catoctin Furnace

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Come, Tell Us How You Lived: 50 Years of Research at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The village of Catoctin Furnace in Thumont, Maryland, contains a notable number of extant workers’ cottages built during the iron furnace’s working life from 1776 to 1903. Although by the late 1800s approximately eighty tenant houses were known to exist in the area surrounding the furnace, today fewer than a dozen survive. These buildings, a mixture of stone and log structures, present an unparalleled opportunity to understand a much understudied type of vernacular architecture. For the last decade, Oxford Tree-Ring Laboratory has undertaken a research project employing the science of dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, to ascertain the construction dates for as many of the houses as possible. This paper presents the results of the dendrochronological research, setting it within the wider cultural context of changes to the ownership of the furnace, the fluctuating composition of the furnace’s workforce, and the economic development of the village as a whole.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Come, Tell Us How You Lived: 50 Years of Research at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow