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Cellars

Originally cellars were holes dug into the ground for the storage of foods.  In the United States -- unlike in many countries -- they usually were found under the house.  Cellar walls usually were the house foundation.   However, some early foundations were built in trenches, dug where the walls were to be placed, but without removing the dirt and rock between the foundation walls.   Because sills and floors rotted sooner if the dirt was not removed, and because it was more convenient to store food underneath the house rather than having to go outside, such cellars became popular.

Cellars are instructive in doing a house history, because it is here that much of the construction is exposed.  Foundation, posts and beams can be seen in concrete  as well as in attics.  It was not until the mid-20^th century that insulation and concrete were added to cellars.  When exploring the cellar, you may find concrete covering an uncoursed fieldstone foundation and dirt floor, metal jacks replacing rotted wooden posts, and insulation covering up ceilings and sills.   Without disturbing these "improvements", look for exposed framing and note its characteristics.  Are the main posts, beams and sills hewn, or are they separate, sawed pieces nailed together?  Are the floor joists sawed or hewn?   Each of these characteristics may give you a clue to dates or changes in the home. (Chapter 6.)

Are there - or were there - fireplaces in the cellar?   Sometimes the 20^th-century furnace covers up the remains of a center chimney.  Look around the furnace carefully for obvious changes in the floor or foundation, or replaced beams.  Fireplaces can be detected by their remains, by the presence of heavy construction on end walls which may cover up an original fireplace, or by replaced (newer) beams in the center of the cellar.  (Foundations were thicker where needed to support a fireplace, or instead, timbers may have shored it up.)

A cellar may have been the original dwelling of the first owners, or a summer kitchen.  Sometimes the cellar was the slave quarters.  This was particularly true in the north, where it was cheaper for the owner to house slaves in a warm cellar, rather than in a crudely thrown-up house.  Look for white lines   which may be parallel or zigzag  on the beams.  This is where plaster cam in through the lath, leaving traces after it fell or was removed.  This, or a cobblestone or laid up dry brick floor or remnants of plank flooring indicate that this space was once lived in.

Is there a small cistern or spring in the cellar?   Some houses  especially German- were deliberately built over a spring.   In other cases a spring was discovered via piping from a hill behind the house to the cellar.

In the cellar you may be able to detect changes made in the house above.  Does the cellar extend under the entire house or under only one section, with a crawl space under the remaining section?  It is not uncommon for the cellar to be under what appears to the main section of the house, or under part of it.   From the cellar, establish where the foundation outlines the first floor.   Does the flooring upstairs end part way across the room, with nail marks in a line along the break in the boards?  This indicates that a wall was moved or removed.   If this occurs in what appears to be a “center-hall” house, measure the widths of the two front rooms and the hall.  Is one room larger than the other?   The original room probably in the one found over the cellar, and this was not a center-hall originally.

If there is a wing to the house, is the cellar or crawl space under it?  Does this wing show characteristics of a structure older than the main section?  For example, its siding, window framing and flooring may be older; or, it may be one-and-a-half stories as compared to the two-and-a-half story main structure, and have smaller dimensions, all indicating earlier origins.  While it is often true that the wing is the older part of the house, it may not have been the original house on the site.  It was common practice until the 19^th century to move structures and add them to newer ones.

The older wing, then, may have been the original house, constructed over a crawl space and later added onto with a larger, more elegant house over a cellar.  Another possibility is that the house with the cellar was the original house on the site. An older, nearby structure could have been moved and placed adjacent to it after a crawl space was dug.  Look for a nearby foundation.  If there is one, measure it to see if its dimensions might fit the wing.  If so, the wing may have come from this site.

This Tip was excerpted from:
House Histories, A Guide to Tracing the Genealogy of Your Home, by Sally Light, Golden Hill Press, Inc., Spencertown, New York, 1989
ISBN # 0-9614876-1-5

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