Puncheon floors were indeed very common in earlier Kentucky and Southern
Appalachian homes.  I had the opportunity twenty years ago to work on a
restoration of a 1790's log tavern built on the Wilderness Road.  It was two
thirty foot pens with a central fireplace, staircase and saddle room.  The
roof and the second floor stretched the entire length of the building.  The
floor was a puncheon in one of the pens of the cabin and on the other pen it
was pit sawed boards.  The one puncheon floor board left was hewed smooth
with an adz and generations of wear from the largest piece of poplar I've
ever seen.  The underside was not finished as well and you could see the adz
marks clearly.  The surviving piece of the flooring was five inches thick,
four and half feet wide and twelve feet long.  It was attached to the joist
logs with two inch thick pegs that appeared to be either locust of chestnut.
There was nothing crude or rough about what was left of this floor.  I've
often wondered what the room looked like with the entire floor out of this
material.  Obviously trees that size were no longer available and we had to
take it out and put a new floor down, but that one board made a beautiful
trestle table which sits in my house today.

------Original Message------
From: David west <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: November 9, 1999 2:09:31 AM GMT
Subject: Re: puncheon floors


>>> Norm/Ilene Tyler <[log in to unmask]> 9/11/99 12:18:40 >>>
wrote:
"What I want to know is Mark Twain's access to this obscure architectural
terminology...  This was new to me."

Ilene

Is this another example of historical revisionism?  Perhaps puncheon floors
were common and/or the terminology was in common use?

Alternatively, perhaps it is just another example of the enormous loss of
knowledge which occurs over time ... a bit like all the coins and other
valuable artifacts which must have fallen through the cracks in the puncheon
floors!

david

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