228 Ohio State Academy of Science 



Cedar Stumps. 



In determining the age cf most of the older ridges I have- 

 depended on data furnished by cedar stumps. Several points 

 must be considered. 1st. The ridge was formed probably 

 nearly or quite 40 years before cedars started to grow on it. 

 Ridges 8 and 7 have no cedars. Following ridge 6 a certain dis- 

 tance, Fred Lay counted 13 cedars, all quite small, and returning 

 to the starting point along Ridge 5, he counted 160. On the 

 bar, which has cottonwoods over 40 years old, are no cedars 

 although it is nearly 5 miles long. On the Marblehead Spit 

 which has formed northeast of Johnson's Island since 1858 the 

 only cedar is one that is said to have been planted. 2d. The 

 large cedars on Cedar Point were cut more than half a century 

 ago. Mr. Samuel Catherman who came to Sandusky in 1835 says 

 "right along after that cedars were cut on the Point; there was 

 quite a business of cutting and transporting them to Sandusky, 

 where all the fence posts were cedar and the frames of quite a 

 number of houses, some of them still standing. The wood was 

 used also for other things. Most of the largest ones had been 

 cut by 1850 or about that tiine." Mr. Louis Adolph, who came 

 in 1863, says, "they had been cut long before that." Captain 

 Freyensee remembers that in 1849 or 1850 in a warm day in 

 January he helped load a scow with cedar posts about half way 

 between the present dock of the Cedar Point Company and the 

 U. S. Government dock. The yawl used to carry the posts out 

 to the scow was loaded so high that it turned over spilling the 

 posts with him into the bay. He does not remember seeing cedar 

 timber brought from Cedar Point after that. According to John 

 Homegardner, Sr., and others the last of the large cedars were 

 removed from Cedar Point by D. C. Richmond who used them 

 for posts on his farm where they have remained sound to this 

 day. This was in Februar}^, 1850. One of the men employed 

 in the work was drowned. Mr. Homegardner too says, "they 

 began taking them from the Point as early as 1835." Dan 

 Myers came in 1852. He says "some cedars were cut in 1853 

 or '54. Probably these were not among the largest; 3rd- 

 After counting the rings on a stump a number equal to five- 

 eighths of the number of rings in the outer inch is added on 

 account of the sap wood that has rotted awa^^ 4th. The 

 largest stumps are hollow and in estimating their age it is 

 not right to assume that the number of rings to the inch in 

 the missing portion was about the same as in the portion remain- 

 ing. iVs a general rule the number to the inch increases toward 

 the outside, though this is not very noticeable in small stumps; 



