10OED, s.v. “rod”, “perch” and “pole.” The length varied according to local tradition. In Ireland a perch was 21 feet long. On the use of this measure in the American backcountry, Noble writes, “ … the dimensions of the log pen house averaged about sixteen or seventeen feet by twenty-one through twenty-four feet. … a sixteen to seventeen foot length had long been a standard dimension in both English houses and barns”; Allen G. Noble, Wood, Brick and Stone (2 vols., Amherst, Mass., 1984), I, 114.

11Westmorland and Cumberland Dialect, 339.

12 Mitchell, “Upper Shenandoah Valley,” 294.

13 Johann David Schoepf, Travels in the Confederation [1783-84] (1911, New York, 1968), II, 33.

14 The dog-trot cabin was similar to the design that has been called the statesman house in Britain; see Bouch and Jones, Economic and Social History of the Lake Country, 108-9.