My house is plank construction, built in the 1830s. The planks that make up the walls are 24+" wide by 4+" thick. I would imagine they were sourced locally. Trees that would make lumber that size don't exist here anymore.
I have to shake my head when my insurance company calculates replacement cost for this house. You couldn't build it today!
I'm no historian on New Hampshire, but I'm honestly surprised you have such wood in your house, if it was built as late as 1830. I had thought most of New England was completely deforested before that time, due to the massive demand for wood, for industry, cooking, and heating. The average household used something like 30 - 40 cords per year in that period, and if you look at any landscape artwork of that time, you'd be amazed at how few trees you can find.
Railroads were just first becoming a "thing" in New England in the 1830's, so your house is too early to cheaply move timber in from afar, by railroad. Was the area where your house stands well outside of town, perhaps relatively remote, in 1830?
My house was built in four phases, 1734, 1775, 1894, and 1995. The first two portions use wood that was sourced either from the property itself, or milled locally. The longer joists (under first floor) are hand-hewn, and many are flattened Walnut or Oak tree trunks. The joists supporting the second and third floors are shorter, and were milled on an early sawmill (reciprocating style). We can roughly estimate the capacity of the first sawmill in our area, by seeing which joists in our house were milled versus hand-hewn.
The original walls in this house were planked in Walnut, and those 1775 planked walls are still hiding behind the "modern" plaster and lathe walls installed during a massive update ca.1820. Anyone walking through this house would date it to 1820-1840, as the generation living here at that time did so much updating and renovation as to almost completely bury it's 1700's roots. Just like anyone today updating their house from the 1970's, they wanted to hide the old and make it look new.
