Yes, Ken, I suppose that the claim of the wood being as old as the house itself may be pure speculation...
I have no photos (this was about 4 yrs ago) but the details are this: My husband and I were digging a new garden. As we were removing the top soil we hit quite a few rocks, and a few treasures; some broken porcelain and an old twisted silver spoon...and a chunk of wood. As we dug deeper to remove the wood (about 4x4) we found it was set into a hole about 3' deep, filled with large rocks. We pulled it out; the bottom and the outside was soft and covered with dirt, but only about an inch deep. The top was similar. It was WRC. The soil is mostly red clay. We used it for a tomato stake.
We pulled another one out from a different corner of the yard...it was rotten through, but in that part of the yard the soil was quite sandy.
The reason I speculate about the age was that the neighbor, an elderly woman whom the street is named after, commented on the fact that she had never seen a fence in the place where we were digging, and she had lived in the house across the street all her life.
Apparently I have a bit too much idealism, in that I tend to believe most of what the old timers have to say without analyzing the reality. ("Well, the lady said such-and-such, and she's an elder, so it must be true...")
I was also going to tell you all about the beautiful pinkish brown cedar shakes found on the bottom layer of the roof we were replacing. They still smelled fresh cut, and had also been there since the house was built.
But, once again, I have no way of verifying that...