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The Historic Beaufort Foundation has estimated the building was constructed in 1804 based on its style, details and a few written documents referencing the house, said executive director Evan Thompson. But there was never anything specific.
HBF recently called on Michael Worthington of Oxford, England -- whose work has led him to Windsor Castle, the Tower of London, George Washington's Mt. Vernon residence and now, Beaufort -- to take sample of the building's original wooden beams and draw from them the exact year Verdier built the historic house on Bay Street.
Worthington, 45, practices dendrochronology, or as it is more commonly known, tree-ring dating. The process offers a scientific way to determine a historic structure's age -- and an excuse to explore.
"I'm really nosy," Worthington said while standing amidst the wooden beams, insulation and years worth of roach excrement in the Verdier house attic. "I just love going into spaces where the general public can't go."
Officials hope Worthington's work with the Verdier house is the precursor to a community-wide project that would give Beaufort a more accurate idea of how old many of it's historic homes are.
"If we find out when these different houses were built, you would be able to see the chronological development of Beaufort and relate that to other events, like the cotton boom," said Conway Ivy, 68, a Historic Beaufort Foundation board member.
Ivy and his wife, Diane, gave HBF a grant that will cover the cost of sampling the Verdier house and their own home at 501 King Street. Worthington took samples from both structures last week.
He plans to come back to Beaufort soon, do a survey of houses determine which ones are suitable for sampling and put together a project proposal. Houses where the exact build-date is already known could serve as references, Worthington said.
The community-wide project would be the first of its kind in the nation, he said.
SCIENCE BEHIND THE METHOD
A tree forms a new growth-ring, or tree-ring, every year it is alive. Weather patterns determine how wide or narrow the rings are. The more favorable the weather for that specific tree, the wider the ring that year. For example, a cold summer with little rain would lead to a thin ring in a tree that prefers a warm, wet climate.
Over the course of many years, the tree develops a "fingerprint" of rings. Researchers take the sample, sand it down and then examine the pattern under a microscope, Worthington said.
The best samples come from pieces of wood with bark still on them, he said.
Along with visual comparisons, information is entered into a computer program that cross-matches the fingerprint with other timber samples and reference databases.
With an ideal sample free of any distortions, Worthington can often derive the year -- sometimes down to the season -- a tree was harvested, he said.
Dendrochronology only provides the year the tree died. However, based on the wood type, researches can often estimate how soon after cutting a tree down contractors would have built with it. If a number of wood samples from the same structure, especially of different varieties, all died in the same year, there's a greater chance the building was constructed soon after, according to Worthington's Web site.
A COMMUNITY-WIDE PROJECT
Many documents detailing when Beaufort's ante-bellum homes were built have long since disappeared, Thompson and Ivy said.
Beaufort's property and tax records were transferred during the Civil War to the Gillisonsville courthouse, which later burned after Union troops occupied the town, Ivy said.
"That happened a lot in the South, which is why we have to use other techniques to try and date our buildings," he said.
With the Verdier house, the Historic Beaufort Foundation has pieced together clues to determine the building's estimated age.
A record of a fire in 1805 on Bay Street references the Verdier house, Thompson said. A decorative element on a mantle is similar to that of a flourish on a Charleston home, built in 1804. Historic preservationist researchers from the College of William and Mary told HBF it is unlikely that decorative element would have appeared in Beaufort first. Verdier likely copied it after it debuted in Charleston, Thompson said. That narrows it down to 1804, but it's still not as concrete as it could be, he said.
The Ivys are in a similar situation.
It is generally believed the couple's house was built in 1816.
For the last couple of years, the preservation group from William and Mary has been surveying old homes in Beaufort and compiling the information for a project.
The venture led students and faculty to the Ivy's house, where they said some of the construction techniques indicated the house mayhave been built closer to the mid-1800s, Conway Ivy said.
The director of the project suggested Ivy check out Worthington's tree-dating work for a scientific take on the question.
That's how the idea for Worthington's Beaufort visit was born.
Each house individually would cost about $3,500 to sample, or about $2,500 if it were part of a larger study, Worthington said. The more houses involved, the cheaper the project, he said, because he won't need as many samples from each structure.
"Any ante-bellum building is a candidate for study because it would help us build our pool of data," Thompson said. "The more people we can get to participate, the better the results."
