Eastern Red Cedar is a junk tree (a juniper) with an interesting history. It is extremely common from the Mississippi eastward. The smell of the wood is a particular feature that makes it useful in cabinetry --as in "cedar chests" used to store clothes. The aroma of the wood repels moths.
The wood is dense in oils and lasts a very long time--most fence posts in the eastern US are ERC...
Additionally, the berries are used, like other juniper berries, in making gin.
Despite all this, it still stinks as bonsai material. Nick Lenz recommends completely replacing ERC foliage with grafted shimpaku juniper foliage--which kind of begs the question --Why bother digging one up if you're going to make it into a shimpaku?
Not to say good trees can't be made from it--just look at Dorothy's--but those are the exception.
By the way, misnamed North American trees have a long history. Bald Cypress isn't a cypress, sweetgum isn't a gum, yellow poplar isn't a poplar, but a magnolia, "live oak" species in california and the Southern US are not the same, etc. Common names for trees are extremely misleading way to ID a species.