Old Deerfield Village Historic District

Old Deerfield Village Historic District in Franklin County, Massachusetts, includes a large group of houses from the 1700s and early 1800s. This supplemental material records new construction dates for roughly twenty of them, based on tree-ring analysis done mainly by conservator William Flynt of Historic Deerfield in 2001 and 2004. Timbers from attics and roof frames were sampled and matched against dated ring sequences. The Eliezer Hawks House was dated to 1714, the Timothy Childs House to 1730, the Allen House to 1734, and the Eldad Bardwell House to 1771-72. Some results matched written records, such as house fires followed by rebuilding. Others showed reused timber or later work, as at the Nims House, where roof framing dates to the early 1790s, and the Hinsdell-Williams House, remodeled in 1817. A few buildings, including the William Russell House, still lack firm dates. The district was listed in 1966 and is also a National Historic Landmark.