On what was my Great Uncles property in the Catskills, the house dates to the 1840's.
The oldest part of the house has pegged rafters and the rafters are marked with roman numerals.
The oldest part of the house IS small, basically one room downstairs and a slanted roof second story loft bedroom upstairs.
The oldest part of the house is the only part with an excavated hole (cellar) under it.
The whole house is built on a dry laid rubble stone foundation.
The house has expanded over the years to cover a area about 4 times the original house.
I would suspect that many of the cellar holes that people find, just never expanded beyond the "first stage" of how people built their homes way back then. Or if they did, the original cellar, was sufficient for the storage needs below surface that they needed. Anyway, my Great Uncles house, it it had burned down or decayed years ago, would have left behind a mighty small hole in the ground, it is maybe ten by twelve feet and only about five feet deep below ground level, the extra foot and a half being raised stone rubble above ground level for the base of the walls to sit upon.
