May
7, 1998
								    Contact:
Jane Ford
               								      (804)
924-4298

U.VA. ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN LAUNCHES STUDY OF TREE-RINGS TO DATE
ORIGINS OF COLONIAL VIRGINIA HOUSES

	For many historic colonial Virginia houses there has been no way
to verify the precise date they were built.  
	But a University of Virginia architectural historian has begun a
study that will attempt to precisely date 15 colonial houses in the
Tidewater area by researching tree-ring samples from the houses'
structural wood and comparing them with a "time line" of the Tidewater
area created by studying living trees or trees for which the date of
destruction is known. 
	Tuckahoe, the Randolph family plantation and boyhood home of
Thomas Jefferson in Goochland County, and Westover, the William Byrd
plantation in Charles City County, are two of the houses whose
construction dates the study will investigate. 
	The study by Camille Wells, assistant professor of architectural
history at U.Va., is one of the largest to use dendrochronology, the
science of study of tree-rings to establish dates, on Virginia
structures.  Tree-ring research was also recently used to identify
fierce colonial-era droughts and shed new light on hardships faced by
early colonists at Roanoke Island and Jamestown. 
	Wells' study, titled "The Drama of Discovered Origins:
Dendrochronology and the Eighteenth Century Virginia House," is being
conducted in partnership with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's
Department of Architectural Research and with a grant from the Jesse
Ball duPont Religious, Charitable, and Educational Fund.  Herman J.
Heikkenen, a former professor at Virginia Tech who now operates the firm
Dendochronology Inc. and has patented a reliable method for using
tree-rings to date historic structures, will be working with Wells and
her colleagues on this project.
	According to Wells, the use of dendrochronology will change the
way architectural historians think and teach about early structures.
Heikkenen's system of developing a "signature" or template for a
specific geographic area, where variations in tree growth patterns can
differ from one side of a hill to another due to differences in rainfall
and other variables of weather, has been tested and proven extremely
accurate for Eastern Virginia.	
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	The technique will allow dating to be established "to the year"
the structure was built, according to Wells.  This exact dating will
establish credentials for information about these houses and their
inhabitants that was only surmised through documents that are currently
available and do not provide the complete history. 
	The colonial Virginia house was one of the most important
features of the time as the center of not only domestic life but also
social, political and economic life.  "Old structures are literally
emissaries from the past, the most durable of all historic events," said
Wells.  
	Because they are one of the most significant features of the
Tidewater landscape, said Wells, "ascertaining construction dates for
this key set of colonial Virginia houses will give us the capacity to
tell fuller and truer stories about their individual origins, contexts,
and journeys through time." 	 
	The fifteen houses are the largest set of buildings studied
together in this way in Virginia. Along with other architectural
characteristics including brickwork patterns, structural systems and
decorative schemes, the results will facilitate dating other colonial
Virginia buildings.  The study will also provide a valuable evaluation
of the current inferential construction-dating methods currently used by
architectural historians.
	The Jesse Ball duPont Fund is a national foundation which has a
special interest in issues affecting the South, an area of primary
interest to Mrs. duPont, who was a native of Virginia. 
	Wells, whose specialty is in domestic architecture and rural
landscape of early Virginia, is a founder and past president of the
Vernacular Architecture Forum.  She also established the scholarly
series Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture and edited its first two
volumes.
###
	For more information Camille Wells may be reached at (804)
924-6440. TV reporters please contact our TV News Office at (804)
924-7550.
















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