I know of a documented shallow root cellar of the before-the-hearth type in a
now destroyed 1780 frame house in Sussex County DE.  The Potter Mansion was
begun as a 1-1/2 story, one-room plan frame house with brick-nogged
construction and cedar shingle siding.  The root cellar was a roughly 3x3
feet opening in the pine floorboards set about 2 feet in from the brick
hearth of a fully-panelled end wall.  The house was raised on a brick
foundation of about 2 feet maximum height, with earth banked around the
cellar to just below the floor framing.  To all appearances the 'cellar'
seems never to have been very deep.
 
The one-room plan house was typical of the Delmarva peninsula in the 18th &
early 19th C. and of the plan itself is no indicator of class.  Benjamin
Potter's house begun in 1780 was the seat of several hundred acres of
farmland on the Mispillion River, east of Milford DE, and a couple of miles
inland from teh Delaware Bay.  Potter was a slaveowner whose family had
settled on these lands by the first decade of the 18th C.  As was not
uncommon for people of some means on the Delamarva peninsula, he expanded his
house in a series of one-room plan additions for a telescope effect of at
least 3 parts: 1780, c.1800, c.1810.  A household inventory from 180?
indicates expensive and plentiful furnishings (4 free-standing corner
cupboards in the +/- 16x18 foot original parlor, 2 additonal corner cupboards
in the c.1800 parlor floor 2-story addn.)  The one-room plan was a mainstay
of the peninsula, and grand houses of the region are often composed of
multiple one-room plan units linked gable-end to gable-end.
 
Older residents have indicated that they were familiar w/ other examples of
root cellars of this type, although I know of no other examples.  (Straddling
the fence of northern and southern traditions, the region is very low,
somewhat sandy, and to a large extent unfit for fully excavated cellars).
 
The Potter House was documented by HABS (photos & drawings) and was described
in a couple of academic press publications.
 
If I can provide any additional info, please e-mail me.  Good luck w/ your
research.
 
Robert Warnock
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