Table Of Content
City directories exist even from the days before phones—as far back as the 1830s or earlier. Just as word-of-mouth is one of the best ways to find high-quality products and services, your neighbors can be a rich source of information when you’re researching your home’s history. This is especially true if their house and yours are similar architecturally, which itself is a clue that they were likely built around the same time. They may even have been designed and built by the same folks, too. From 1867 to 1977, the Sanborn Map Co. published large-scale maps to help fire insurance companies determine the insurability of buildings. If the home you’re researching is covered, maps will show the building layout and dimensions, construction materials, neighboring structures and more.
Peel Back the Paint
You Can Get Piece Of Hoboken History Before House Is Demolished: Estate Sale In Final Days - Patch
You Can Get Piece Of Hoboken History Before House Is Demolished: Estate Sale In Final Days.
Posted: Fri, 15 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Many older homes predate modern conveniences of water, electricity, gas and telephones. Connections for those utilities made at a later date may form an interesting part of your house history. Water company records are often held by a public entity, but those of other utilities are private. Contact the local utility provider to ask whether historical records exist and where they’re held. Local resources, such as public libraries, historical commissions and historical societies, are key resources to tracing your home’s history. While the specific missions of these groups differ, they all share the initiative to collect and preserve local history.
Run DiedinHouse and HouseCreep
(The manufacture of building materials became fairly standardized by the late 19th century.) The type of nails in the frame, for example—wrought, cut, or wire—direct the fastener-educated to a particular period. Explore over 330 years of newspapers and historical records with GenealogyBank. In nearly all jurisdictions, property ownership is a matter of public record that anyone can access. Knowing how to find the history of a house can reveal why your home is laid out the way it is. History buffs searching for the truth or homeowners looking for a good story may want to satisfy that curiosity. Your house history search is about adding more color to your family tree, but there are additional benefits you may have never considered.
Visual Clues
For less exacting research, or for general information, or for zoning information, use the Department of City Plannings Zone Information and Map Access Systems aka Zimas. Zimas contains lots of fun and useful information, but is not compatible with all browsers. It does contain information from the Assessor's Office, which can also be accessed through the Assessor's Office Parcel Viewer. My career as a historical consultant began with an article on the Echo Park Historical Societies' Website by Matthew Dubois called History at Home. In a nice twist, Matthew would become my first client when he hired me to research what seems to be the oldest house in Echo Park. This article is excellent as far as illustrating the general methodology for researching your home.
BUT at the end of most sections you will see a “Learn More” heading with an image that links to another post. Genealogy websites like Ancestry.com might be able to provide some details about the people who used to own your home, if you search the owners’ names. Important characteristics that reveal a house style include whether or not it is symmetrical, the shape of the roof (gambrel, mansard, gable), the types of dormer windows, the floorplan, and the type of trimwork. If you aren’t sure how to figure out your home’s style, snap a photo of the house facade and a few specific details like corbels or door trim, and do a Google search with ‘house style’ to help narrow down the possibilities. Fire insurance maps, otherwise known as Sanborn maps, are yet another source of trustworthy particulars. A little online research (including Googling your city or state plus “Sanborn map”), will help you find local editions.
Historic Preservation
Historical societies possess a wealth of human and documented knowledge and are often eager to share what they know to help others learn about the past. Major Suell Winn was known for his “industry, honesty and sterling character”. He owned an extensive farm with house (built in the early 1800s and still standing), three barns, carriage house and slaughter-house. And unfortunately he was killed by a train after leaving a town meeting where he “spoke vehemently” for the need to erect safeguards at that same crossing. About 1/10th of a mile south, is the Deacon Thomas Kendall Homestead, whose main house (built pre-1750) is still standing!
Visit the local building department
Sometimes during renovations, rooms or portions of them get closed off. In between the walls, you could find old furniture, photographs, keepsakes, or nothing at all. Don’t take a sledgehammer to your walls based on your suspicions, though! Contact a general contractor about using specialized equipment like a SeeSnake Micro Inspection Camera or Walabot to see inside your walls with minimal damage.
Extant fire insurance records are most likely in state or local archives and historical societies. The many collections at the Pennsylvania Historical Society in Philadelphia and the Mutual Assurance Collection at the Library of Virginia are two excellent examples of what you might find if records exist for your area. If you’re unsure of what companies existed in the time and place you’re researching, try doing a Google search for your city and fire insurance to get names of potential companies. Researching the history of a house isn’t that different from doing traditional genealogy.
Email Historical Society & Commission
While you are at the library, consult the census records for your area for details about the previous owner. You’ll find out their occupations and the number of people who lived in the house at the start of any given decade. You can check their location list to search historical records by place.
Notice whether neighboring houses appear to be about the same age. Interior details such as ceiling medallions and cove ceilings, though more likely to be removed, covered up or added during restorations, also can provide clues. The goal of the first phase is to collect as many clues as possible (i.e. the “scavenger hunt”).
Depending on when your house was built, you can gather information in the Pre-1900s or Post-1900s house sections, check out photos in the Picture section, and ask questions and network in the General discussion and Hangout forums. While the forums on OldHouseWeb aren’t going to tell you much about the specific house you’re considering buying, they can tell you a lot about houses from that period and/or in your region. The way DiedInHouse compiles its report is through an algorithm, which searches through both public and private databases for information about the address. For $11.99, you can receive a report and discover if anyone has ever died at a specific address.
No comments:
Post a Comment