Tree-ring analysis of the Free Black Beech Church in Rush County, Indiana: A surviving relic of an Indiana African American farm community

Abstract

The Beech Church is part of a historically significant cultural landscape created in the 1820s by Southern Free Blacks in central Indiana, USA. Despite the immense cultural importance of the building, no definitive build date was known, though several sources posited a post-Civil War date. The main goal of this investigation was to determine the construction date of the Church using tree-ring analysis. Additionally, dating the building would lead to the creation of local tree-ring chronologies (series of accurately dated and measured tree rings) for a region that has received little dendrochronological study. Samples were collected from the crawl space and attic of the building. The samples were prepared for dating following standard dendrochronological methodology (sanding, skeleton plotting, ring measurement). Dates were assigned to individual tree rings by crossdating. Twenty-nine samples were collected from 21 timbers; 28 were successfully crossdated. Beech, sycamore, tulip poplar, and white oak timbers were found in the structure. Beech and tulip poplar were the most collected species and yielded chronologies spanning from 1690 to 1853 (900 rings) and 1741 to 1853 (653 rings), respectively. The last ring formed/harvest date (ring adjacent to bark or wane) was 1854 for nine timbers. No sampled timbers had any rings dating later than 1854. We conclude that the Beech Grove Church was erected with timbers that were harvested after the spring of 1854 and prior to spring 1855.