Much of the work is offline — you'll be spending time in libraries, chatting to local people and walking around your neighbourhood looking for clues. Here's how to get started. Researching local history can be a great social pastime and a collaborative experience.
Your house is just one piece of the bigger jigsaw that makes up your area. Talk to people in your local pub, your neighbours and contact your local history group to find out if anyone else has already got started. I've seen people who began on their own but eventually managed to get the whole street involved, pooling their knowledge and resources.
Next, visit your library's local studies and archives unit. It will have all the information, including maps and plans, to help you discover why your house was built in the first place. Was it a cottage for workers at a nearby factory? Or a new-build replacing a house that was bombed? Look for stylistic clues to when it was built and for whom — pay attention to chimneys, original doors and fireplaces, ceilings and windows. Does it conform to "polite architecture", when homes after the 18th century began to display more stylistic features?
Or is it "vernacular architecture", which relied on locally based materials — timber frames, thatched roofs, etc. Walk around your area to get a sense of how the streets were originally planned.
Look at historical maps and use Google Earth to see how the area has changed over the centuries. Finding out who used to live in your house is one of the most exciting parts of the project. Focus initially on recent occupants. However, if intrigued by the whole process read here and here for more detail. Your home specifically or general area may be located in a national National Register of Historic Places NRHP or local historic district and be documented in that survey.
My home was not listed in either a national or local district. However, there were other homes in my area that were listed and a discussion about my street in the local historical survey The Cultural Resources of Wakefield. And I found some compelling history about my neighborhood. As mentioned above, my house may have been part of farmland owned by Dr.
John Hay or Major Suell Winn. This house, the Deacon Thomas Kendall Homestead, whose main house built pre is still standing. Considering how close it is to my house, my house likely was part of their pasture. Starting in the mids this land was gradually broken up and developed for homes on a new street Emerson Street — which abuts our backyard. There are several types of maps available — insurance maps, panoramic maps, topographic maps, aerial photographs and land ownership maps, to name a few.
Some types of maps appear to be more prevalent in geographic areas than others. Click here for more info on the top 5 types of historical maps. I found several historical maps that included my home. The map above is a panoramic maps of my current town Wakefield Massachusetts dated While hard to see individual property detail, I can gleam a lot of information about my town in the late s.
Tip: Start with the most recent map to orient yourself with your neighborhood, then backtrack in time and trace the development in reverse. Orient yourself with a main feature like a main street, a railroad, a lake, etc.
Many homes dated from the s to the s were built from plan books. These catalogs contained sketches and floor plans of homes, with the opportunity to buy the blue prints. The one showed here was taken from Amazon , but also check out antiquehome. In some cases, blueprints plus all the materials and parts needed to build the house could be ordered via mail catalog i. Kits could be order via catalog and were delivered via railroad to the closest depot.
Kits would arrive at the railroad station via boxcar and contain 12, — 30, building parts! Can you image? Want to learn more? Fascinating history. Kit houses were fairly popular. Sears sold approximately , houses different styles between and I currently live in an American Foursquare style house, which were commonly build from plan books and kit homes.
Most historical societies, accept photographs, artifacts, artwork donated by members of the local community. A photograph that includes your house could be in a donor file or scrapbook.
In the early s cameras became commercially available to the general population. It was popular for people to take pictures of various sites, including their homes, and convert into postcards to send to family and friends.
The postcard shown here was discovered on ebay by a friend who owns one of the houses shown. It is circa postcard of a street in Little Falls, NY. The back of the card is addressed to a lady named Bessie from a man asking her to a dance in Starkville, which about 20 miles southeast of Little Falls. In addition to local resources, some folks have found postcards for sale on etsy shops like The Wurdeman Studio. City directories existed before the telephone was invented.
Organized by address, you can see who resided at your house for a particular year. Some directories even list their occupations. Jump back every decade until you see a name change, then narrow the search per year. My house was built in In a carpenter John W Monahan, aged 41, lived in our house with his wife Catherine, age 39, a housewife. This additionalperson posesa few a questions. I wonder why Barbara moved in.
Or a renter? Telephone operator? The newspaper clipping above is from another friend in a Facebook Group permission provided to include.
Local history books obviously differ by town. There is usually a section in the library devoted to just local history books. If available, refer to index in the back of the book for street name and owner last name.
The Images of America series has a substantial number of images of hundreds of areas across the US. These are beautifully done books chock-full of pictures, maps, and local stories.
But, the people trail humanizes these facts. It provides the personalities of the past owners and occupants i. This trail gives color to physical aspects of the house as well i. The people trail will give you potentially fascinating and poignant stories that you will never find in public records.
Two groups of people can best help with the people trail — neighbors and previous owners. Seek out and talk to neighbors who have lived on your block for an extended period time. Engage and listen to stories. To help jog their memory, have a list of the previous owners names that acquired through the paper trail.
Mention these names to the neighbors. Finding people who have lived in the same neighborhood for a long times can be difficult. Historically, people moved within a smaller radius. People stayed geographically closer, even with generations within the same town. But that is usually not the case nowadays. For example, I grew up in the same town as my parents, my grandparents, and where my great-grandparents settled after they emigrated from Europe in the early s. But now with people moving more often I no longer live in that town , this type of local institutional is unfortunately lost.
Most of my neighbors are fairly new to the neighborhood i. There is one exception — an older couple who had lived there for about 40 years. I found out the following:. Past owners are a treasure trough of information on the house — the Holy Grail, in my opinion.
You should already have the list of previous owners obtained from creating a chain-of-title. Next is trying to find their current contact info. Technology: In this day and age of social media and on-line databases, you should be able to find someone fairly easily. There are a variety of ways paid and free to find people on the internet. Some free options:. Ask your neighbors, ask friends in the community that have roots in your community. Do they know past owners? Are they still in direct communication with them?
You never know who-knows-who. This method will probably get your more favorable results versus technology that is more of a cold call versus an introduction from someone they know. However the best way in most scenarios to get something you want or need from someone is to give them something they want or need.
What does that mean? Send them a current picture of the house. This will give you credibility as well as pique their interest. Have a bit of a dialogue. Maybe further your conversations via phone. People are curious. But note, a downside of inviting past owners over is opening yourself up to criticism.
Prepare yourself for some negative comments. Once you have their attention, what do you want to ask? What do you want to know? Quite frankly, this depends on your wants and needs.
Are you looking for physical history i. Do you have a specific question — i. Or maybe you just want a general conversation on the house. Also, do they have any pictures of the house during their ownership they are willing to share? But I bumped into one or rather a group of sisters who grew up in the house. A few months ago, my husband uncovered this Snoopy notebook while replacing a stair tread to our attic.
It had fallen in the cracks and was under the tread. In less than 5 minutes I had a comment from her sister asking if we bought their house on Elm Street which we had. She then tagged Shannon and another sister. We chatted via messenger for a few days. Turns out, they lived in our house for 25 years. This was the family with 4 children my neighbors mentioned that somehow squeezed into this tiny house. Shannon dated this notebook from the early s. I asked if they were responsible for the writing in the back of the bedroom closets.
We had found and since painted over declarations of love for Michael Jackson written with a bubble-gum pink ink pen. Turns out the third sister had quite a crush. In addition to the paper trail i. This part can be very subjective and easy to miss something. However, it supported the other trails and helped put the puzzle pieces together. Ask yourself the question — where does your house fit in relation to the rest of the neighborhood?
Compare your property to the properties around you for visual clues. Every house as an exterior discernible style or maybe two…. Different styles were popular during particular eras. Styles evolved as a result of new technologies and fashions.
Estimate the age of your home by identifying a handful of visual clues. Don't keep this all to yourselves. Friends, neighbors and former residents of your home can be an invaluable resource for collecting information about its history. Go public with your research, and see what comes out of the woodwork! Country Life. Design Ideas. Home Maintenance. Country Living Shop. Shopping Guides. United States. Type keyword s to search.
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If you do, then much of the research has probably already been done for you. LABabble via Flickr. Sanborn—Perris Map Co. United States Census records via Wikimedia Commons. Underwood Archives Getty Images.
Elizabeth Finkelstein Writer Elizabeth Finkelstein is a self-proclaimed old house addict on a lifelong hunt for her perfect historic home. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano. More From The Old and the Beautiful.
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