The physical part of my internship began with a 5AM wake-up and a three hour drive to Tazewell to deliver a truckload of cut metal to the historical jail that we are restoring. The Tazewell jail was built in 1832 and expanded some thirty years later. The structural damage to the structure is immense, and it is taking the combined efforts of skilled carpenters and stone masons to restore it. The most interesting aspect of my brief tour of the job site was the wooden, possibly Chestnut, beams that ran the width of the jail. The beams made up the floor of the upper-level of the jail and supported the four iron jail cells that housed the prisoners of this small mountain town. The beams were roughly two feet thick, square, and about fourteen feet long. In total, about a dozen original timbers made up the floor of the second story. 
