Where To Find the Past?
Once you have a general idea of the age of your home, there are several places you can look to find more clues to it's past. The main difference between researching your home and researching your family, is that you will in general be using only local resources. Your house is not likely to have traveled, and is probably sitting in the same place it's been since the original family moved in.
Local Memory
The first, and maybe most obvious source of information, is to ask around your neighborhood. Do you have elderly neighbors who have been in the area for a long time? They are an incredible resource, not only for names but for events and occurrences that took place in your home. In my own research, the house next door is still owned by the original family. They were able to tell us all sorts of stories, and pointed us to the grand-daughter of the man who built our house. While there were a lot of things she couldn't remember, she gave me a name and that spiraled into a detailed portrait of our home's first family. She also shared early photos, such as the one above, which I feel extremely lucky to have copies of.
Federal Census Records
An equally valuable resource is the Federal Census Records. The Census has been taken every ten years since 1790. The website http://www.ancestry.com/ has access to the records, but it is a paid service. Your public library may have a subscription to the Heritage Quest database, where you can find the census records with your library card. Each census is indexed by location and name. The indexes are made from transcriptions of the data, so sometimes there are errors. If you can't find what you're looking for using the index, it often pays to take the extra time and scroll through page by page. The census provides information about the people living in your home, their ages and occupations, and in the 1930 census you can even see if they had a radio. The records have been most valuable for me in providing names, which I can then search for in other places.
Local Museums
Your village, town or county museum is a great place to poke around in. Our village museum has a collection of obituaries going back many, many decades. It only took our incredibly knowledgeable historian a few minutes to locate the obituaries I was looking for. These short articles listed several organizations in which our people were involved in, giving us yet another direction to head in. You can also find out a bit about the town you live in, such as any industry or other reasons why people may have been attracted to the area at the time your home was built.
Historic Newspapers
Many newspapers across the country have been digitized and indexed in archives for use by the general public. In Central New York, the Syracuse Post-Standard has a historic archive available for the subscription fee of $6.95 a month. This is an incredibly valuable resource which I used to to find additional obituaries, social notes, bowling scores and church activities that involved the people living in my home. When I discovered that one family member had died of polio, I dug a little deeper and found that there was much concern over an outbreak a few months previous to his death. The local news can provide a much deeper understanding of what was impacting people during a particular time period.
A simple Google search may bring up links to the newspaper collection you are looking for. Some are free, some are paid subscriptions. Also check your local library as they often will have access to local archives of publications.
All of the information in this, and the previous post, comes from my personal experience researching my home. The resources I have described were the most valuable ones I found to use. I hope that the information is helpful and ask that you leave comments to let me know how I can improve this blog. Thanks!!
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