Just went to the library to try to find our house on the Sanborn maps....I did not know they were so strictly urban centers! Today I live within the city, but I'm pretty sure our house was surrounded by farm land when it was first built (still there on 1937 aerials). But I am only a mile from the center of town and our house is not on the maps! I am so sad!
Any other suggestions for getting info on house historical information? I still need to go to city hall sometime and I think I'll email the city and state historical societies.
Any advice on where you found info on your old house would be appreciated.
Thanks
Last edited by House_BuhBooLis on Sat Jan 14, 2017 11:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I have been going a little crazy trying to pinpoint when my house was built, been to the county clerk numerous times reading handwritten entries on microfilm, some of which is hard to tell a 7 from a 9 when looking up book/page etc.
My street is the border of the Sanborn map, and it ends on my street, house outside border! My neighbor who is the town historian shows her property on the map, but not her 1914 house, which it should show. It was also outside of the city border at the time, so that might be the clue for yours.
She showed me a book saying a house was being built on my street in 1915, which was news clippings about the area. The name was not the owners of this house, then I found out that they didn't own it until 1927. Now I think that the named was this house, and we can't find the book in the archives library! Very frustrating.
So I and the historian are thinking the house was built between 1915, no later than 1924, based on what we have learned about the house, but I wont rest until I know for sure.
Good luck!
1915 Frame Vernacular Bungalow
"If it ain't leanin' or a little crooked then it ain't got character" - local resident
Houses in rural areas can be a bit of a challenge. Checking deed records for the original location of the house may provide some clue, or at least an approximate date. Are there any original plumbing fixtures that remain in the house? Many of them have a casting date on them.
There were books...kind of like a phone book, but not quite...I can't think of what they are called, perhaps someone else can...that listed the name and occupation of the person living in a home at a given year. I looked up The Old House in one at the library in the city it was located in, and found it predated the "official" build date of the house-and that the person that built the house worked for the railroad. You can also try the census records. I don't recall what years are published-they predate the Cottage and the location for the Bungalow Project is quite a project to hunt through so I gave up pretty quick on that lol.
Some places keep very nice records of building permits waaaaaayyyyyy back into the past so you might find that. Others don't, e.g. because there was a fire or flood at the court house/city hall/whatever.
Address directories could be helpful too, especially if they're reverse directories, i.e. listing occupants by address rather than by name. They aren't necessarily accurate though and neither are official records. In Austria, residence registration has been mandatory for a very long time, i.e. within a certain period of living somewhere you'd have to register that place of residence with a government agency, including all family members. These records aren't generally public for privacy protection but if the people concerned are dead you can access them. I did that for some of the original occupants of our house and found wildly inaccurate and conflicting data. All the apartments have been numbered from day one, yet some of the registrations don't contain numbers and if the records are to be believed, some people changed apartments back and forth several times within a few years. I did find a reasonable completion date for the house as all the original occupants registered in late April 1915 so I guess that pins down moving in at late March or early to mid April. The original construction permit was signed off in August 1914 I think.
Thanks, everyone. I will try not to get discouraged and try some alternate routes! Thanks.
1918colonialrevival, The tub has "old" fixtures, but I don't think they are original...but perhaps I will look closer at them...would pipes in the walls have the date? Or just the fixtures?
I don't think they stamped pipes but you never know. Apparently toilets and bath tubs frequently have patent dates stamped on the bottom so you'd need to turn them over to see.
Texas_Ranger wrote:I don't think they stamped pipes but you never know. Apparently toilets and bath tubs frequently have patent dates stamped on the bottom so you'd need to turn them over to see.
Texas_Ranger wrote:Some places keep very nice records of building permits waaaaaayyyyyy back into the past so you might find that. Others don't, e.g. because there was a fire or flood at the court house/city hall/whatever.
Address directories could be helpful too, especially if they're reverse directories, i.e. listing occupants by address rather than by name. They aren't necessarily accurate though and neither are official records. In Austria, residence registration has been mandatory for a very long time, i.e. within a certain period of living somewhere you'd have to register that place of residence with a government agency, including all family members. These records aren't generally public for privacy protection but if the people concerned are dead you can access them. I did that for some of the original occupants of our house and found wildly inaccurate and conflicting data. All the apartments have been numbered from day one, yet some of the registrations don't contain numbers and if the records are to be believed, some people changed apartments back and forth several times within a few years. I did find a reasonable completion date for the house as all the original occupants registered in late April 1915 so I guess that pins down moving in at late March or early to mid April. The original construction permit was signed off in August 1914 I think.
Reverse directory! That was what I was thinking of. I kind of forgot about them, but I found more on Fulton History for the Cottage so I didn't think of loking in them (Fulton History is only useful in NY). If I have time I might look for the Bungalow Project though.
Have you tried talking to neighbors where it USED to be? Sometimes they can be really great information sources.
