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Old family horn

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I have no idea how old this is, but it has been in my family forever. My Dad never mentioned anything about it. I would appreciate any info.
I grew up in NE Ohio, in the village of Stratton.
Nice little horn, scratches apparent down near the plug, which appears to be cherry, but likely v old pine.
just a plain Jane horn, nothing fancy about it. Horn has been scraped very thin down near the plug.
marks on the plug indicate it was turned on a lathe, seems like they just cranked it out fast.
I would love a good guess as to its age.
 

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Off the top of my head I would say 1830-1870 by the size and styling but that ring looks fairly modern so could be 1970-1990. Either way it's a beauty ( I kind of admire the simpler working horns).
 
I remember the horn from early memories, born in 1946. no one in my family, going back to around 1910 ever shot black powder. My great grandpa was a farmer, Civil War vet, perhaps it came from his side of the family.
 
No idea how old it is, BUT, if you can get a GOOD photograph showing the end-grain of the wood, you might have a methodology available. You could contrive to use "dendrochronology", which is basically counting the rings on a tree stump. Each ring in the tree counts one growing season... or year, generally speaking. Now, in this case, you cannot know when the tree that was used to make the end of the horn was cut down, so you can't count backwards (or foreward, for that matter) to arrive at a definite date... so this simple methodology would not work for you.

What is generally not known though, is that the rings of a tree are not all the same width. During good growing seasons, the rings are thicker than others. When combined, you have a pattern of growing seasons. That pattern is unique and defines a slice of time for a given area. Julian Barbour calls things like this "time capsules" in his book The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics. Dr. Barbour preferred things like rock strata, but tree rings are sort of the same concept.

Since you have an idea of where the horn was made, all you really need is a tree that was cut down in that area that is maybe a hundred years old, or another tree that was cut a hundred years or so earlier (a known date). By this method, you should be able to arrive at a pattern that matches the end-grain of your horn. Even this won't give you an exact date, but it will tell you approximately when the tree was still alive and growing. You can extrapolate the approximate age of the wood from that.

Say you find that the pattern matches the patterns of other trees during the years 1861 - 1865. This establishes that the horn cannot be older than that, though it could be younger, and because you don't have the entire pattern from the tree trunk, you cannot say for sure how much younger. If you can extrapolate the approximate diameter of the tree, you could potentially determine the approximate age of the wood at the point your particular piece of wood was taken from. If your particular piece was taken from a large diameter tree that was probably at or near maturity, you can figure that it was probably cut down about the time that the growth patterns match.

This would take a bit of work, and it won't give you an exact date, but it should get you within fifty years or so and it is much cheaper (and more accurate for this particular slice of time) than radio carbon dating.

Yeah, sometimes my inner nerd surfaces.... ;)
 
I have no idea how old this is, but it has been in my family forever. My Dad never mentioned anything about it. I would appreciate any info.
I grew up in NE Ohio, in the village of Stratton.
Nice little horn, scratches apparent down near the plug, which appears to be cherry, but likely v old pine.
just a plain Jane horn, nothing fancy about it. Horn has been scraped very thin down near the plug.
marks on the plug indicate it was turned on a lathe, seems like they just cranked it out fast.
I would love a good guess as to its age.

Wow! That’s my kind of horn!

I hope you find the information you’re looking for.
 
No idea how old it is, BUT, if you can get a GOOD photograph showing the end-grain of the wood, you might have a methodology available. You could contrive to use "dendrochronology", which is basically counting the rings on a tree stump. Each ring in the tree counts one growing season... or year, generally speaking. Now, in this case, you cannot know when the tree that was used to make the end of the horn was cut down, so you can't count backwards (or foreward, for that matter) to arrive at a definite date... so this simple methodology would not work for you.

What is generally not known though, is that the rings of a tree are not all the same width. During good growing seasons, the rings are thicker than others. When combined, you have a pattern of growing seasons. That pattern is unique and defines a slice of time for a given area. Julian Barbour calls things like this "time capsules" in his book The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics. Dr. Barbour preferred things like rock strata, but tree rings are sort of the same concept.

Since you have an idea of where the horn was made, all you really need is a tree that was cut down in that area that is maybe a hundred years old, or another tree that was cut a hundred years or so earlier (a known date). By this method, you should be able to arrive at a pattern that matches the end-grain of your horn. Even this won't give you an exact date, but it will tell you approximately when the tree was still alive and growing. You can extrapolate the approximate age of the wood from that.

Say you find that the pattern matches the patterns of other trees during the years 1861 - 1865. This establishes that the horn cannot be older than that, though it could be younger, and because you don't have the entire pattern from the tree trunk, you cannot say for sure how much younger. If you can extrapolate the approximate diameter of the tree, you could potentially determine the approximate age of the wood at the point your particular piece of wood was taken from. If your particular piece was taken from a large diameter tree that was probably at or near maturity, you can figure that it was probably cut down about the time that the growth patterns match.

This would take a bit of work, and it won't give you an exact date, but it should get you within fifty years or so and it is much cheaper (and more accurate for this particular slice of time) than radio carbon dating.

Yeah, sometimes my inner nerd surfaces.... ;)
Very, very, interesting information.
Thank you for sharing all of that.
 
Close up of the ring
This is a great old horn.
Does the wire used to make the front ring seem to match any old fences, to include barbed wire, that you recall from growing up?

I'm going to send a link to this topic to friend in Ohio who is in the hornets guild as an apprentice, his "master" has a good collection of original horns. Maybe they can come up with some more information.
 
That would be great! I would love to get info on this horn. All who knew anything are long passed away.
Initial contact confirmed some of what I was already thinking. Mid to late 19th century working horn. Pic isn't quite good enough to confirm wood type but most likely pine. Drawer pull and ring at the front most likely were added later in the horns life. Originally probably had a nail or some such as an attachment at the base plug, when this pulled out the drawer pull and front ring were added.
Here is another Ohio horn from what would seem to be the same period, wire ring also added late in the horns life,
Resized_20230321_180651.jpeg

Referring to the horn in the foreground.

Might get more info later.
Some better pics of the base plug, maybe in natural light with less glare, might help with wood identification and maybe more on age.

Very good quick to make simple horn. Great little piece of local and family history.

Thanks for sharing.
 
That’s a neat old horn! I live originals, these old working man’s horns are some of the best in my opinion. I’d say that horn was most likely made around the late 1800’s, I think the base plug was replaced and the drawer pull added. I have one that was rough sanded and never finish sanded as well. I never understood why the builder didn’t sand the scratches out…Any which way yours is a great old horn!
 
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