[miss marmelstein]

I’ve been there - I thought I was told it was his birthplace. I don’t see how measuring how old the logs are will tell us whether he slept, lived or was born there. Just that he could have.

[bgill]

It’s hard to have the cabin as his birthplace since the logs were dated to his time as POTUS.

[Enchante]

Age of the logs can’t rule it IN, but they can rule it OUT.

[morphing libertarian]

maybe they will provide evidence he didn’t

[jonascord]

You can tell, by the thickness of the rings, and the pattern of thick to thin, when the tree was harvested. Rather like a bar code. So, if the tree was cut down in 1890, it would be sort of sketchy to think that the house it was in was Abe's birth place.

A lot of these buildings were rebuilt in the early 1930's as WPA and CCC projects. New Salem State Park, outside of Springfield, is typical of these rebuilds.