Looks like yellow pine to me. I would try various finishes and see what matches the closest.

Yeah, I'd say pine, too. If the original trim was intended to be painted, it might have been made with a cheap wood (ie pine). When you strip something, you have no idea what's underneath. Elegant walnut to show the owner's status? Or pine, intended to be painted.

We stripped the paint on a lawyer's bookshelf. My father had always lamented that his father-in-law desecrated the shelves with black paint. Low and behold, the shelves were golden oak and the top a reddish mahogany. Aha, that's why they were painted.

My house is in NY and the trim work is similar…. pine was used in the back rooms, but oak was used in the main rooms. Your house was probably the same way.

Thanks! All of the original trim is the same wood and finish, in the public areas and upstairs. It was a basic grade of house for the time, based on other things like the very simple exterior window trim.

Would the pine just have been shellacked, or maybe stained first?

Pine darkens overs time, exposure to light and the type of varnish that was used. You're going to need to experiment with type of pine and varnish. You may need to use a light stain.

I would bet it is pine as well which is good, it works easily and you can get bits to mimic the moulding shapes easy enough.

The bad news?

It is nearly impossible to match aged wood. Finish with poly and hope in a few years it will match.

I am also in Massachusetts. And that does look like the pine trim in my c. 1905 house. Mine is finished with shellac but yours looks like it may have been refinished with something else - try the alcohol test.

When I was redoing my windows I needed a new stool and apron. I bought boards from a local reclaimed lumber shop so they would match the current trim and gave them to my contractor that was doing the windows. The match was very good - not something that you would get using 'modern' pine. Let me know if you want the name of the place that I used and I can look for it - they are/were in Cambridge/Watertown with sources in Maine.

If finish is confirmed to be shellac or you would like to use shellac on new trim,buy orange flakes and mix with denatured alcohol to test color. From there you can add clear,brown,yellow flakes to change color. Flakes store indefinitely so keep some for touch up as needed in later years.

It's not oak. It's pine.