Ready to start researching your historic house? Thanks to municipal archives, libraries, and historical societies, so much information has been preserved. And more and more of these records have been digitized and made publicly available online. But hunting down all of the bits and pieces can feel like searching for so many needles in a haystack.
Here are some tips to help make the search easier. Warning: this kind of research can be addictive! It’s well worth the journey (and a great use of cold-weather months for old-house souls).
This image linked to Exquisite Estate on 100+ Acres with Historic Manor House, Guest Cottage and Barn – CIRCA Old House
Tips on Researching Your Historic House
1. Get clear on your “why.” There are lots of great reasons to want to understand the history of your house. Maybe you’re planning some improvements and want to know which features are original and which may have been added later. Or an old layer of unusual wallpaper piqued your curiosity about past occupants, their lives and tastes. What motivates you?
2. Find out whether your state has an online database of historical surveys. I’m in New York. Lucky for me, there’s a great resource, CRIS, that I use almost every day to look up specific properties and see whether they have been studied for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. If your house has been surveyed or listed, an inventory form or report will give you basic — and possibly extensive — details including its estimated date of construction and architectural style. Photos, too!
For some reason, historical surveyors missed the CIRCA listing featured here — a late-19th-century “Stick Style” mansion near Hudson, NY. So, we’ll need other tools.
3 .Consider your house’s architectural style. Start big, then home in on your house’s details. With help from such books as A Field Guide to American Houses: The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America’s Domestic Architecture by Virginia Savage McAlester and Elements of Style: A Practical Encyclopedia of Interior Architectural Details From 1485 to the Present by Stephen Calloway and Elizabeth Crowley, you’d quickly confirm the approximate date and style of the CIRCA house. The asymmetrical plan, projecting tower and wraparound porch point to Romantic revival styles that prevailed over Classical forms starting in the mid-19th century. The decorative texture of the exterior — cornice brackets, “Stick” grid overlaying clapboard siding, and opportunities to call out various features in multiple colors — shows off the capabilities of machine-made (versus hand-crafted) building supplies.
4. Search the deeds. With a little stick-to-itiveness, you can trace property ownership back in time from the present to whenever your house was built. Your county clerk’s office houses the hard-copy deed books (dusty and fun!), and many counties have online databases like this one Family Search is a free service that gives you access to older deeds (click the “Search” drop-down menu, then select “Catalog” and scroll down to “Land and Property”.
5. Go to the map. Old maps often included property owners’ names. You can also sometimes see outbuildings. Useful online map archives include the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, David Rumsey Map Collection and Historic Maps Works. Your local library and/or historical society probably has some great resources as well.
6. Take down all the names you come across. Your deed and map search will give you the names of past owners, which you can look up on Family Search (census records, birth and death dates, etc.) as well as old newspaper archives, including fultonhistory.com and newspapers.com.
If you’re really lucky, you may come across a historic photograph of your house. Some towns took “tax photos” at various points in time, so you might find evidence of a porch or other original details that are now missing. If your house is on a main street, you could catch a glimpse of it in photos of public celebrations or publicity shots. And sometimes, just sometimes, the proud owners had themselves photographed in front of their happy abode.
Here’s one showing what the view from the CIRCA listing once looked like.
Historic Images – Greenport Historical Society
History is one of the most potent charms of old houses. We love the layers, the telltale signs of lives lived, the tangible connections with the past. Knowing your house’s story and significance can also help you qualify for certain financial incentives including historic rehabilitation tax credits.
Like old-house stewardship, research is a creative process, full of unexpected twists and turns. Consider the checklist above your initiation into the “old souls” club and, most importantly, have fun getting to know your house.
AUTHOR KATE WOOD grew up criss-crossing the country in the family’s Volkswagen Bus, visiting house museums, battlefields, Main Streets, and national parks. Today, she is an award-winning preservationist, real estate broker and principal of the full-service historic rehabilitation consulting firm, Worth Preserving. Kate believes in the essential value of old-building stewardship to sustain community character. For her, each property is a cause and each client a fellow advocate. She specializes in matching people with properties, skilled contractors, historic tax credits and other benefits to support top-tier rehabilitation projects.
