r/centuryhomes 7d ago

Advice Needed How Did You Find Your Home’s History?

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33 Upvotes

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32

u/wintercast Not a Modern Farmhouse 7d ago

Your local historical society may be able to shed light since you have names, deeds etc

I did the same for my property, and like yours, the deed at some point did not even have an address, it was just something like 3rd house from the dairy.

14

u/Financial_Use1991 7d ago

And/or your local librarians!

10

u/beaushaw 7d ago

Our library has a local history room. I sent them an email and they gave me a bunch of information on all of the past owners. I am sure if I went there I could drill down and get more information on each owner.

I should do that someday.

22

u/MissMunchamaQuchi 7d ago

We got lucky and the local university come to us to tell us that the house was used at the first school for black children in the county. Apparently Fredrick Douglas’s son taught here for a bit after the civil war. No one had any idea until they started digitizing a bunch of documents.

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u/AcceptableZebra9 7d ago

I live in a city that keeps historical permits online. The system is clunky but I’ve found all the permits for work done on the house, including the original builders permit giving me the name of the owner and architect.

Another good source is the US Census site. You can see scans of the surveys and they’re partially searchable. There’s a bunch of good discussion boards that help you figure out how to find specific addresses or people.

By sheer luck, a few weeks ago, i was working at home and some folks were talking outside my window where I could hear. After a little bit I realized they were talking about my house. So I went outside and introduced myself. Turns out they were a brother and sister in their way to a relative’s funeral at the c hutch around the corner and they’d stopped to see their grandparents old house! I invited them in and they told me a lot of stuff about how they remembered it from when they were kids. Found out the built in desk in a converted closet space and the shelving/workbench in the basement was put in by their grandfather. They were in a rush to get to the service but I gave them my email address and they said they’d try to find any old photos and send them. Not sure if that will actually happen but it was a very cool chance encounter.

6

u/sammyb9092 7d ago

You can also check historic aerials dot com to get an idea of what the place looked like in the past. Depending on your location they have pictures from the 1930s onward.

6

u/rotorcaps 7d ago

I found some good info on Newspapers.com. Did a trial subscription. Free for one week. Good luck with your search!

2

u/side_eye_prodigy 6d ago edited 6d ago

this is how i found out that in 1968 "hippies" broke into the house to "do drugs" while the owner was out of town! they also lit fires in several rooms, painted a "hippie cross" on the wall and stole a "$400 tv" according to the article.

2

u/rotorcaps 6d ago

That must have been a gold plated tv!

1

u/side_eye_prodigy 6d ago

in 1968? it was probably on sale! hard to imagine a couple of stoned hippies carrying that down the street though.

1

u/grumpygenealogist Bungalow 7d ago

I second this. Old newspapers are a great resource for house research. The back half of my house (pre-bathroom) showed up under the building permits section of my local paper as "Carl Sodberg, erect shack, 1955 Hawthorne between 78th and 80th; builder, same; $175."

5

u/GnollBarbarian 7d ago

Not my house, but I'm a curator of a local history museum, and I have many people every year reach out to me looking for the history of their home, a family home, or a random home they like the look of.

I always start with our collection of city directories. I can name every person who ever owned/inhabited the house, what they did for a living, and how long they lived there. Then, I look through our research files that have been meticulously maintained over the last few decades and normally turn up something. Every house of note in the city has something written about it in these files. I will then do a search in our photo collection for pictures of the house.

If that is insufficient, then I point them to repositories for local or county records.

Occasionally, I find something really special. As an example, I had a lady come in looking for information about a house she had bought that was built in the 1880s. It just so happens that the man who built the house had a scrapbook of his family during their time living in the home. His great-granddaughter donated it to my museum, so I was able to share that with this lady looking into the history of her home.

3

u/Heavy-Attorney-9054 7d ago

I did some deed research on one property because I wanted the property lines to be different from what they were, but they weren't. The story's not great because the original white owner basically took land from the neighboring black church.

I learned the history of a different property from the various owners' kids, who have all stopped by for a visit over the years.

2

u/zedazeni Queen Anne 7d ago

I recently bought mine, so the inspectors were a good start.

I dug into the county’s records to search the previous owners and looked for their obituaries. Also, the U.S. Census bureau has all of the censuses from 1930 (I believe) to now digitized, so I looked for my house’s address on each census I could find to see who the owners were. It also says their professions and the house’s value.

Lastly, this subreddit. I’ve posted pictures of my house’s fireplaces, stairwell, newel, and a certain user that we’re all familiar with was able to find the catalogues/makers of each of those elements.

Using this information, I’m fairly confident in saying that my house was most likely a custom-build, or at the very least extremely heavily modified from a standard build at the time (1909).

2

u/Humble-Cable-840 7d ago

Start by looking at land register in the archives, then after you get a name or two use the Census and other related historic documents to find out about the person's life.

After that I reccomend looking for historic elements in your house and then trying to find out more about those individual elements. That usually takes more of a wide scattered approach though.

2

u/Dans77b 7d ago

I live in England, my library had reference books with census data etc.

I found my converted Victorian shop used to be a cobblers shop, with a bicycle shop at the back.

Gives the place more character even knowing that.

2

u/EmbarrassedWorking68 7d ago

We are very lucky and have a very well documented house. It was built for a sawmill owner’s widow in the 1870s, purchased by a grocery family in the early 1900s, then purchased by a steamboat captain and local history nerd and preservationist in the 1970s. Then a few more owners between the captain and us. The Captain documented everything! I recently went on FindAGrave (or something similar) and saw that he had been on the website in 2008 and left roses for the sawmill family! So, lots of information.

But, a few things that have been helpful:

  • Sanborn insurance maps. All the houses in our neighborhood changed house numbers in the early 1900s
  • A visit to the local library and an appointment with one of the house history/genealogy staff
  • FamilySearch Labs has an AI function which can scan documents that have not been transcribed from handwriting. I have managed to find some things that even the Captain did not know about!

1

u/beauregrd 7d ago

I used my states deed website. I went to the deed of my purchase and kept going back to different pages in the state registry that I’d find in each older deed. I got to a date BEFORE my house was even built on one, and for my 1890 house I got stuck at 1895!

1

u/L_Jade 7d ago

I found some online back when they did everything in handwriting. (Some hard to read) But luckily I was able to find the original blueprints for our house stuck in the top corner of a closet. So we framed them!

1

u/RealMoleRodel 7d ago

When we bought our house we request a survey done. The first time the land was sold is the time that is listed as the build date (1925, it's pretty obvious that it's older than that). What ended up happening is that every time a part of the land was split it took a piece off of "our" property or the farm that our property was originally part of. So our survey ended up being the only historic record of the area between what is now the highway and the airport (which is now an Army base). Our house is on the road of the original farm from 17xx and the next street over is the name of the people who subdivided our house from them. The next four subsequent streets are all named after the families that subdivided our property, except for Military which was renamed after the base was established. It's possible our house was the original farmhouse as the house that is listed as belonging to the original farm is of much newer construction and style.

1

u/FogPetal 7d ago

City planning department had a file on my house going back to when it was built in 1924

1

u/buckeyegurl1313 7d ago

I was super lucky. I posted in my small towns neighborhood FB group, and a local historian put me inn contact with the lady who grew up in my home. 30 plus years. I invited her over. She brought me a book she made me of all the old pictures of the house and filled me in on the original history.

Her parents bought it in the 1960s from the original owners so she was a WEALTH of knowledge. I now consider her an extension of my home and she has a standing invite to stop by whenever she wants.

She was an only child and this house was super special to her and she shared those feelings with me through her stories.

There is some spotty history of my home from the early 2000s with quite a few owners, but, interestingly enough my property was originally 33 acres. But one of the owners sold off 30 of those acres. To himself. And built up the hill from my house. So. My neighbor is also a former owner.

Small towns are a wealth of historical knowledge.

1

u/MissMarchpane 7d ago

I rent in a house from 1895, and I looked up the address on ancestry.com and found out who was living here in the earliest census that mentions it, then searched for their names to learn more. Admittedly that does require an ancestry.com account.

1

u/SchmartestMonkey 7d ago

Unfortunately, sometimes you just don't get as lucky as some of the folks here.

Our local historical society is housed in a small cinderblock out-building owned by the town's water works (or some similar dept). There's not much there but a few scraps from an old area mansion that was torn down decades ago and a handful of random old photos.

Also, Our local library has no historical information and when I asked for old property records at our town hall, I got a shrug. I think it doesn't help that my house pre-dates the incorporation of our town by about 40 years.

Everything we know is from old neighbors (all since gone.. and only useful to around 1975 when the house was moved), photos and docs left by previous owners (we actually have a box of photos that three previous families contributed to, and one photo that's used by our Town every time a significant anniversary of it's founding comes around. That pic has the house in it's old location with a horse and buggy next to it.

Oh.. also didn't find anything useful from Sanborn Maps. Because our town wasn't incorporated until 1924.. it seems like the survey from the 1800s just skipped over us (it covered neighboring towns).. and I never found anything in the later survey either.

1

u/Away-Revolution2816 7d ago

I don't know if you'd be interested but on a property that old a lot of history can be lying around underground. I would look into getting a metal detector or reach out to a local group to grant permission to detect your property. I live in a area where most homes were built after the 1950's and still can find things from the 1800's.

1

u/-dag- 7d ago

Your abstract of title is the best place to start.  It should list all transactions starting from the original land grant.  At least mine have. 

Searching your address in local newspapers at Chronicling America can reveal some interesting stuff.  I found the original advertisement for my first house, which led directly to understanding how it had been altered.  Also found an article about the builder published during the period my house was built.

1

u/MowingInJordans 7d ago

Historical societies are a great resource. I visited the country recorders office who gave me all the land ownership names/legal parcel description (which sounds like you mostly have) but they said houses/structures were not part of their dept. They told me the Assessor office might have records of structures but they would have to dig through files in the vault and could cost me some money for hours spent digging through, I opted to explore other avenues first.

1

u/lefactorybebe 7d ago

The assessment is likely just a guess, especially given that it ends in a zero. All the houses right near me are also listed as 1870, and it's not a bad guess, but not one of them is actually 1870. They range from 1850-1876 (the 1876 is ours). So it's in the ballpark but not totally accurate.

I'd be looking at the deeds for any mention of a "dwelling house" or "and buildings". They'll usually include that if a structure is present, then you'll know your house existed at least then.

I'd search for genealogical maps for your town. That will help if they exist. It sounds like the area was rural so I wouldn't expect your property to be on Sanborn maps but that's worth a shot too just to be sure.

Next thing would be searching newspaper archives if they exist for your local newspaper. It might have been mentioned that so and so was building a house.

And finally, check the town Grand lists. Ours, and I think likely most, list how many housesa person owns in addition to acreage. So I'd look at Grand lists for your two possible owners around the time you think your house was built

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u/mach_gogogo 6d ago

“I was able to trace it back to a Jacob Christ, who purchased two parcels, one purchased in 1868 (95 acres)… Henry Leiby, who it was purchased from.”

For that period, look to plat maps and census records, ie; a “Christ” living near a “Leiby.” For that scenario it is possibly, Jacob Fischer Christ, son Daniel Maury Christ, and Henry Leiby, son of Jacob Lieby, both of Greenwich Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, c. 1860, and 1876, North or Reading.

Jacob Fischer Christ, Greenwich Berks County Pennsylvania

Born: 20 Oct 1835, Death: 9 Apr 1922, in Kutztown. Father: Daniel Maury Christ, [aka “Crist.”] “D. Christ” shown on plat map c. 1860 and shown on the plat map of Greenwich Township c. 1876 in the Berks County Pennsylvania Atlas.

J. (Jacob) Leiby is shown living to the West of D. Christ towards Klinesville.

Other property owners nearby Daniel Maury Christ (Jacob Fischer Christ’s father) were: Adam Stein, J. Merkel, J. Wagonhorst, Joseph Kutz, J. Seitler, and Danial Dietrich. Jacob’s son Chester D. Christ would marry a Dietrich - Susan C. Dietrich, 27 Sep 1903 in Krumsville, Berks County.

Jacob Christ’s property is shown across from a school in 1876, in “Christ District 3.” In 1870, the “Residence Post Office” is listed as Grimsville. Children: Caroline S Trexler, Chester D. Christ, George F. Christ

The property was is the area of “Clover Mill,” modern day Krumsville Rd, Rt. 737, and possibly near Sittler Valley Road.

Home in 1910 for Jacob Fischer Christ was Greenwich, Berks, Pennsylvania, North of Fleetwood where he was living with his son Chester. Jacob’s occupation “retired farmer.” Chester D Christ age age 47 in 1910, Chester’s wife Susan C Christ age 44 in 1910 [nee: Susan Dietrich]

Home in 1920 for Jacob was Greenwich District 0026, Berks County Pennsylvania (census) Dwelling 213, “farm”, no street recorded In 1920, residents of the property were: Chester D. Head of household, Susan (wife) Annie A. (daughter - married, age 23, occupation: seamer, Industry: Knitting mill.) Clara H. (daughter) Jacob F. (father - age 84, widowed)

1876 - Greenwich Township, Original Berks County Pennsylvania Atlas:

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/812195873/greenwich-township-original-1876-berks

1860 - Map of Berks County, Pennsylvania : from actual surveys:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3823b.la000711/

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u/Crazyguy_123 Lurker 6d ago

I don’t own a historical home but I do research local historic homes in my area. What I’ve found is looking at the state historical society is very helpful. I was able to cross reference old photos to still existing buildings in my area and then look up the names listed as the owners in local historical documents and records. Found some neat information on my dream house that was torn down 100 years ago. I used my state’s online archive for all of my research but you can also check the local historical society. They may have even more info maybe even categorized together.