FamilySearch Basics For Your House History Research

In researching the history of your house, an invaluable resource to you in learning about the former and original owners and occupants of your home will be the vast database of resources available via the website, FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org). Certainly, if family history is one of your hobbies (or your profession), then you no doubt log on to this website on a very frequent, if not daily, basis. However, even for you, I hope you glean some tips here with a focus on relevance to the history of a house.

What is FamilySearch?

FamilySearch is a completely 100% free website backed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. If you are a skeptic at heart, fear not-- there is no obligation whatsoever to subscribe to or to be subjected to any teachings of the LDS. The Mormons believe that families continue beyond physical life, thus they provide this extensive database for all in order to contribute to the worldwide knowledge of families. FamilySearch is, bar none, the most extensive free online collection of historical documents and indexes related to genealogy (Ancestry.com is likely the most extensive paid-subscription resource). The number of documents available grows by the day as more and more documents are digitized, indexed, and placed online for free viewing. In addition, an even greater amount of documents are listed in their database here which are not available online, but are available for borrowing on microfilm for viewing at any one of over 4,700 Family History Centers throughout the world.

What Resources are Available for House History Research?

On FamilySearch, you will primarily be hunting for knowledge about those persons who have owned and/or lived in your house in decades past. However, items like probate records might also assist you if your house's land was passed down within a family, creating a gap in the chain of title found in deed research. On the main FamilySearch home page, clicking the menu heading "Search" will lead you to the main Search overview page.

At the left side of the Search page, one can input any historical person's name, and FamilySearch will provide search results for available records. You can be as specific or as broad as you like in your search inquiries-- in general, inputting specific information into several search fields will yield fewer, but more targeted results. This may be the quickest way to find exactly the document you might be looking for, if it is available; however, you may miss other important documents that a broader search would provide. Broad searches (for instance, inputting just the person's last name) will yield a high number of search results (think tens of thousands) which will include a high number of results which are not relevant to your research task. It's important to strike a balance between the two extremes and to search trying a number of different things, in order to find documents which actually refer to your targeted person while also opening up the possibility of finding the highest number of relevant documents.

One thing I usually start off with is to input the person's first and last name, and under "Restrict Records By:", I restrict records to the particular state(s) where that person lived. If I'm able to deal with the amount of search results, I will usually go several pages deep in the results before trying a more narrow search. In the screenshot below, I searched for one of the previous owners of my house's land, Frederick A. Brandes, whose life I chronicled in a previous post, using his first and last names and restricting records to Pennsylvania. The search results list 3,166 results. FamilySearch lists those which match the search prompts most closely at the top of the list. Here, 4 of the first 5 results are indeed relevant to the same Frederick Brandes I was looking for. Within those four records are two census enumerations, a World War I draft registration card, and an index listing for his marriage to Bertha Winkler. If a digitized image of the record is available for viewing, you will see a camera icon at the right-hand side of the results listing, where you can click to see the document image.

Looking back again at the main FamilySearch search page, clicking the link for "Browse all published collections" will navigate to a list of all available record collections. In the left-hand sidebar, one can narrow down the records list by place, date, and collection type (highlighted). Let's now examine two of the main record categories and how they can help in your house history research: census records and probate records.

Census Records

Within the past year, FamilySearch has updated their census collections to include free access to images for nearly every census year, whereas previously some years were only available for image viewing at other sites. Now, you can use FamilySearch as a one-stop shop to a large extent for census images. I've discussed previously how census records act as an essential building block for gathering some of the basic facts about previous occupants of your home. If you happen to know some of the names of previous owners of your house, you can search for that person directly by doing a name search on the main search page and examine any census results which seem relevant. In such a manner, you can learn a good deal about that former owner, such as their occupation throughout the years, their family make-up, and perhaps even whether they owned a radio or not. However, you may not find a census result for each available year at first. To search a particular census year (i.e. 1910), you can navigate to the collections list and type "census 1910" into the search bar. Finding a census listing for a previous owner for the year in which they lived in your house can give you the full listing of their household in that year (for 1850 through 1940 only), telling you all the occupants of your house in that year. Think spouse and children, most obviously, but there also may have been other relatives, other boarders, or even servant helpers living with the family in your house. If you believe that the family lived in your house in, say 1920, and you find them in the 1920 census, you can essentially confirm that they did indeed live there if they municipality listed at the top of the census enumeration matches, and furthermore if the address and street name are listed in the left-hand margin of the enumeration sheet.

The fourth family listed on this sheet of the 1940 census if the Cantlin family, which owned and lived in my house at the time. At the top of the page, the incorporated place name "Ardsley" and township "Abington" match my house's location. The address listed in the left-hand margin next to the Cantlins "402 Central Ave" was the address of my house at that time.

If you have not yet completed your chain of title, or if you were left with an ownership gap after that process, then you may be left searching the census for your house's occupants in a bit more of a "blind" manner. This is also true if the owner of your house never actually lived there, which may be evidenced by your finding them enumerated at another address in the expected year, or if their grantee and grantor deeds both list their residence in a different town.

To find occupants for your house in the census without the benefit of a name to search for, the most effective way is to search City Directories, which are not available on FamilySearch, but which may be found on other sites such as Ancestry (the BEST place to look for these is the local historical society-- not everything is online!). Short of that, at FamilySearch you may be subject to searching census images "manually", by locating your municipality in a given census year, and scrolling through page-by-page looking for your house's address. This is, admittedly, somewhat cumbersome (but much easier than yesteryear when you couldn't access these images from your home computer!), and not a guaranteed success, as some census enumerators did not list the household's address in the margin. In such case, you are left to likely inaccurate guessing as to which household lived there. Be aware that addresses do change from time to time (for example, by home's address number was #402 from its origins until sometime in the 1940's, at which time it was switched to the current number #502). Navigate to the desired census year (ie 1920) by searching "census 1920" into the search field on the collections listing page. Next, in the field for "Residence Place", input the name of the town, city, or governmental municipality where your house is located (you may have to try one or two different names-- ie Ardsley for neighborhood might not yield results, but Abington representing the township may work more successfully). Moving to the search results will give you a list of names living there at the time, at which point you can select one of the names to view the digitized images for that locality. Start paging through, looking for your address, if addresses were listed. If the enumerator did include street names and addresses, yet you don't have any luck finding your street at first (and you know it existed in that year), try clicking the town name at the top of the screen in the navigation string. Notice in the image below that "ED 67" is currently shown, indicating that images are being shown for Enumeration District #67. Clicking on the locality name of Abington gives me the option of switching over to images for ED 66 or ED 68, which I can also browse through. With any luck, you will find the address you seek, as well as the household living there.

One can use the arrows in the upper-left of the screen to scroll through successive images, or you can type in a number to jump to that image in the sequence. Notice on this image that Frederick Crispin and his family lived at 119 Oakdale Avenue in Abington, PA.

Probate Records

If your house or its land was passed down through generations of the same family, then your deed research may have resulted in a large time gap. In this case, you should try to find probate records which can verify the transfer of the land through inheritance. Or, you may have found reference to this type of ownership transfer in a later deed once the land was sold out of the family. Navigating back to the main FamilySearch collections list, click "Probate & Court" under collections type. You can then filter further by "United States of America" and then by the state in which you live. In Pennsylvania, I have the choice to browse a collection called "Pennsylvania Probate Records, 1683-1994". Here, you can attempt to find probate records such as wills and estate administration documents. Note that in most, if not all cases, you cannot search for specific names by typing into search fields. Instead, you will need to browse the images and consult the images of the index books, which will lead you to other document images-- this being the virtual equivalent of using physical deed books in the actual courthouse.

Take the example of the will of Daniel Mulvaney, who was the father of Emma Spear. In the land deed conveying Emma Spear's tract of land in Abington to Reginald Ferguson, the prior transfer of this land from Daniel to his various daughters, including Emma, is mentioned, and the will location is referenced as Book #13, Page #440.

A portion of the deed conveying land from Emma Spear to Reginald Ferguson. See the middle paragraph for the history of conveyance within the Mulvaney family.

So, due to this deed, I know that this will exists and that it proves the transfer of the land through inheritance. But let's assume for a moment that I do not know the exact Book and Page numbers, and pretend that I wish to find a will for Daniel Mulvaney in Montgomery County, PA on FamilySearch.

Once I click on the PA Probate Records collection at Family Search, I then click further to "Browse through 3,200,560 images" (don't worry, we aren't browsing through that many images!). Next, a listing of all the PA counties for which probate records are available on FamilySearch. I click "Montgomery". I am presented with the following list:

I click on "Will Index, 1784-1942, K-R" since Mulvaney will be listed within that portion of the alphabetized Will Index. This takes me to the digitized Index book for K through R, which includes 639 images. As I start to scroll through, the headings at the top of the Will Index book include two initials (for example KW). Looking at the content of the index page, it becomes clear to me that the index books for these years are organized by Last Initial and First Initial (for example, William Keeler is under KW). I skip ahead to the middle of this digitized film roll, and finally find the page MD which should contain the index listing for Daniel Mulvaney. Sure enough, Daniel H. Mulvaney is listed, with his will proved on May 24, 1873 and located in Book #13, Page #440, matching the information in the deed exactly.

Daniel H. Mulvaney is included in the index at the bottom of this image. The information matches that which was provided in Emma Spear's deed to Reginald Ferguson.

Now that I have the Book and Page number, I click back to "Montgomery" within the navigation string at the top of the page, to return to the long list of image groups shown earlier. This time, I click on "Wills 1871-1878 vol 13-14" since I know that the will was proved in 1873 and that it was recorded in Book #13. Out of the 738 digitized images in this book, I skip ahead to image #230, which shows me Page #440 of Book #13. There it is-- the transcribed will of Daniel H. Mulvaney, which, in short, gives a third of all his real estate to his wife, Julia, for the rest of her life, and the remainder to his two daughters, Emma Spear and Bertha Mulvaney, and his grandson Ralph Stone. This is a key portion of the land history of my particular house.

The last will and testament of Daniel H. Mulvaney, proved in 1873.

Photos on FamilySearch

If you create a free account on FamilySearch, you will be given access to additional features of the website, including the worldwide collaborative Family Tree, and the collection of user-submitted Photos. From the FamilySearch home page, click "Photos" under the heading "Memories". This will lead you to a page where you can submit your own family history photos from your personal collection. However, if you click the "Find" tab, you will be able to search the collection of user-submitted photos. Within this collection are a number of historical photos, many of which are pictures of ancestral homes.

Although I have not been able to locate anything related to my own personal home or to those who formerly owned it, a search for the term "house" yielded nearly 20,000 image results, so it is well worth giving it a shot!

Final Thoughts

Although I have delved deeply into only two record collection types here, I hope that this demonstrates that FamilySearch has much to offer, not only for personal genealogy research, but for house history research as well. And you can't beat free. As always, view findings with a grain of salt until you are able to matter-of-factly know that any assumptions you may be making are proven via agreement across multiple documents. So head over to www.familysearch.org and have a blast! You might find yourself searching for hours upon hours.

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House History on Jeopardy!

I caught some of this evening's episode of the world-famous game show, Jeopardy!, and happened to walk into the room just as the contestants were making a run through a category called "House Proud". This was part of the first round (the Jeopardy! round), and each answer and question in this category dealt with a specific term for a type of home dwelling. Although I had already missed seeing the $200 answer and only caught the response for the $400 answer, I enjoyed taking a stab at the remainder of the category. I knew the $600 and $800 answers, and couldn't come up with the $1,000 answer in time.

Thanks to the Jeopardy! fan website, J-Archive, I was able to find the full answer and questions from the "House Proud" category and share them here. I am taking the liberty after each question to add further background and information about each term.

$200

Answer: "Aputiak is another name for this dwelling of northern North America."
Question: "What is an igloo?"

Background: We all can picture the dome-shaped ice block structure known as an igloo. An igloo is a temporary winter hunting-ground dwelling used by the Inuit (Eskimos) of Canada and Greenland. According to the book "Native American Culture" by Kathleen Kuiper, the term "igloo" is related to a town called Iglulik in northern Canada, with the word "iglu" meaning "house". A builder uses a knife to cut 2-foot by 4-foot blocks from the compact snow of a snow drift. The bottom course of blocks is laid out on a flat stretch, and the top edge is cut at an angle to allow the next row to slope inward in the process of forming a dome. Joints are filled in with loose snow.

Image courtesy of the PBS program Nova

$400

Answer: "A 'caravan' in England, in the U.S. it's called this dwelling that may go from place to place."
Question: "What is a mobile home?"

Background: According to Jane Dagmi for www.bobvila.com, mobile homes began as an efficient way for recreational travelers to tour the country. Through necessity during the Depression Era, many began using these trailers as their homes and a permanent niche market was born. Mobile homes again came in handy as emergency housing on military bases during WWII. The post-war decades saw "trailer parks" begin to spring up throughout the U.S.

Image courtesy of The Daily Mail

$600

Answer: "New Orleans has many of these narrow, elongated dwellings, named for a type of firearm."
Question: "What are shotgun houses?"

Background: A shotgun house is one which is arranged such that all of the rooms of the house are aligned in a straight line in succession from front to back, with no connecting corridors. One must travel through one entire room to get to the next. This arrangement valued usable space over privacy by eschewing the dedication of space to circulation use only. Richard Campanella for the New Orleans Times-Picayune describes how the term "shotgun" derives from the notion of firing bird shot through the front door and out the rear without touching a wall. check out the link embedded within this paragraph for Campanella's discussion of several differing theories on why there are so many shotguns in New Orleans.

Image courtesy of Archidius architectural design and construction blog

$800

Answer: " 'Pub' is short for this; at one time, they were compelled to lodge travelers."
Question: "What is a public house?"

Background: As implied in the Jeopardy clue, early English common law during the 15th through 17th centuries required select inn and tavern keepers to provide lodging for all travelers who were willing to pay. According to Brittanica, many of the colorful pub names you may recognize today (such as "Bag o'Nails", "Goat and Compass", and "Elephant and Castle") are distorted forms of historical and ecclesiastical phrases ("Bacchanals", "Great God Encompassing", and "Infanta de Castile").

Image courtesy of Encyclopaedia Brittanica

$1000

Answer: "Look out below! Just west of Colorado Springs is the site called the Manitou these Native American dwellings."
Question: "What are cliff dwellings?"

Background: As you'd expect by the name, cliff dwellings are literally built into and formed from the side of a cliff. They are most associated with the Ancestral Puebloans (also known by the less-preferred term "Anasazi"), and several examples exist in the western U.S., in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. Cliff dwellings are fascinating structures which incorporate selective excavation of the natural niches and caves in the cliff, along with the addition of new masonry. The example cited in tonight's episode of Jeopardy, the Manitou Cliff Dwellings, are located near the foot of Pike's Peak and are over 800 years old.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

It was fun to see a whole category related to house history on Jeopardy! In case you are wondering, the contestants correctly answered 3 out of the 5 answers. On top of it, I learned an alternative name for igloo! I hope you've enjoyed it as well.

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Saturday Spotlight- Circa 1915 Craftsman in Souderton

This week's Saturday Spotlight house is a Craftsman bungalow just outside of the borough of Souderton, PA.

Image courtesy of real estate listing by Re/Max Reliance

We have here a fairly modest Craftsman of nearly 1,900 square feet which exhibits several of the typically common features of this Arts-and-Crafts-inspired home style. The most distinctive of these are the low-pitched roof of the front porch, anchored by tapered stone piers which touch the ground. Stonework is continued with a prominent external fireplace of wide and tall proportion. The short and long 8-pane window is a window shape typical of the style. Knee braces mounted just underneath the roof eaves are one of the hallmarks of Craftsman design. The diamond-shaped siding shingles are an interesting decorative feature for the gable facades, although these are likely not original to the house. A fresh paint job with historic colors could do wonders for this home. On the interior, we see more Craftsman details: coffered ceilings, built-in cabinetry, and stained wood trim throughout.

Image courtesy of real estate listing by Re/Max Reliance

Image courtesy of real estate listing by Re/Max Reliance

Origins

This Craftsman house is believed to be the earliest remaining home of about a dozen homes, on a stretch of road at the edge of town which is now peppered with a few small commercial buildings and a few sizable light-industrial properties. Yet, it was not always so of course. Although not constructed until the 1910's, the house sits on what was previously the 45-acre farm of Henry B. Sell. Sell owned and ran this farm at the edge of Souderton at least as early as 1877, living there with his wife Emeline. They raised at six children on the farm over the years, and eldest Harvey stayed on the farm through the early part of his marriage. Once patriarch Henry passed away in 1909 of a stomach ulcer, however, it appears that the Sell family moved off of the farm and into the borough itself.
Meanwhile, the bungalow featured here was built sometime within the next decade. A few other modest homes where built up along Hatfield Pike during the pre-war era as well. No major farm structures survive on the property, although their time of demolition is not known.

Location of the Henry B. Sell farm, along what is present-day Souderton-Hatfield Pike.

1950s to Present

Post World War II, the immediate area surrounding the Craftsman gained new neighbors in a few ranch-style homes, but the commercial/industrial nature of the Pike appears to have begun around this time as well. In 1966, Joseph Hoffmann, along with his wife Gertrude, purchased the neighboring ranch home, and in the 1970's built a small machine shop for his "J. Hoffmann Tool and Die Company" behind the house. In 1986, the Hoffmanns also bought our subject Craftsman house as well. As the larger of the two houses on their adjacent properties, it's reasonable to assume that they took up residency in the Craftsman at that time. Mr. Hoffmann has passed away within the past decade or so, and the house was sold to another couple. Apparently in a half-finished state of repair in a few of the rooms on the interior (namely the upstairs), it is currently on the market.

The commercial and light industrial properties has continued to be built up sporadically, and the house is now more or less surrounded by such properties. But the Craftsman sits, waiting for a new caretaker, to finish off some of the incomplete renovations and carry it into its next several decades.

Image view Google Street View

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Interview with Berks County Recorder of Deeds-- Fred Sheeler

Back in September, I shared the online search and image viewing capabilities for documents at the website of the Berks County Recorder of Deeds (a county adjacent to my own). In my article, I noted the strides Recorder Fred Sheeler has taken in making these documents so accessible, in my view above and beyond what you see in many other counties. Recently, Mr. Sheeler afforded me the opportunity to ask him some further questions about his accomplishments and his recording process. Hopefully, under new leadership with newly-elected Recorder Ms. Jeanne Sorg in my home county of Montgomery, I may see some similar types of improvements in the coming years. My Q&A with Mr. Sheeler is below, and his bio page is linked here. The interview has been edited some for clarity.

You've been Recorder since 2008 and were just re-elected to a third term. What would you consider to be your major accomplishments in those 7 years?

My primary objective that I had to run, and got accomplished pretty quick, was eliminating any sort of a backlog in our current recording volume. We did that very fast by tweaking the existing computer system that was here to the best extent that we could, and simplifying alot of procedural work that bogged things down. Then, to be ensured that we could keep that up and then do it even better, that's where we installed the complete new software platform... functionality on the website, alot more functionality on our recording side.

So, really I look at it as two things-- keeping up with the new, existing volume and making it as easily searchable as possible, and as fast going to record as possible; and, preserving and making available all the old historic documents. There's a fine line-- some counties have said "we're too busy with just keeping up with new stuff, we're not concerned with the old stuff... it's not important. If people need it, let them come in here and go through it." Well, I think you can do both and we've been doing both. We now have seldom any backlog at all-- right now, there is one document in our electronic recording queue (about 80% of all new documents come through electronically) so you say, basically that's caught up... and as far as paper documents, that box is empty. So, right now there is nothing waiting to be recorded. That's where, for our staff members, there's nothing new to record, so they go into backfile indexing (old documents which were never indexed into a computer system). Right now, we are working with deeds, so we're indexing and verifying deeds that were recorded in 1931. The old computerized system had only indexed documents from 1982 forward (deeds before that you had to use the actual index books), and so now we've indexed into the system over 50 years of deeds.

So catching up on, and eliminating, the current recording backlog allows you the freedom to spend time on these indexing projects. How much of a backlog was there when you came in?

When I got here, it was roughly about a 2-1/2 week backlog. Now, that was after the prior Recorder was ordered by the court to catch up-- she was actually up to six months behind at one time. When it gets six months behind, things don't get recorded in the proper order. Anything in the backlog is held in a vault, and at that time the vault was so packed with six months of documents, you couldn't reach the document that came in first because it was buried in the back of the vault... The problem of a backlog was compounded because you couldn't record things "first in, first out" as you are supposed to. Now we do everything in the order its received. Electronic recording makes everything very simple, it stays in the correct order in the queue once something is submitted in the e-recording queue. With paper documents (only about 20% of received documents), it physically comes into the office at a certain time-- the staff if able to consult the e-recording queue and continue to work on those which remain in the queue up until the electronic queue meets up with the time when the paper document came in. So everything is kept in as correct an order as possible.

What would be some of the difficulties or challenges other Recorders might face in implementing the dual goals of recording current documents as well as indexing older documents?

Well, maybe the limitations on their computer system. If they have any of the major systems out there, they can do this kind of stuff too. One of the older systems, a user might have to pay a subscription fee to search for a certain amount of time, so that makes it harder... it could be monetary things: your staffing comes under the control of (county) commissioners. The Recorders have alot of autonomy, but if the commissioners say you can't hire somebody, you can be stuck. I haven't had problems with that, since I had a pretty large staff when I got here. Here, we've generally not filled positions when people come up for retirement. We went from 24 staff members down to 10 staff members.

A new Recorder coming in must make sure they are doing e-recording. It saves you the amount of time you would need to do these other things. There's no paper shuffling, no check handling, it's just click, click. Make sure you have a computer system that's automated enough that indexing comes with it. There's so many fewer steps. Correcting mistakes is simple as well. It makes it go so much faster that it allows your staff the ability to do these other projects yourself. Now, you might have to pay for microfilm conversion, but every single county in Pennsylvania has a fund called the Record Improvement Fund. This is set up by law-- we get to collect $3 per document that is recorded (we average 50,000 documents a year, so about $150,000), which can go into this fund. That can cover alot. Even in smaller counties, they don't record as much, but they also don't have as many documents to archive. With very low volumes like that you might even be able to scan your documents in-house.

Recorder of Deeds is an elected position in most counties-- what are some of the political issues for a position like this? Does it really boil down to the fundamental differences of scope and size of government?

You know, I think, some people try to run that way. My last opponent tried to say "he's for big government, he's a liberal..." I kept repeating: I've cut our expenses over $2 million a year. Our staff is down from 24 to 10. Now, I was a little worried due to it being an off election cycle. You only have more dedicated voters come out in some elections and you can get concerned that it can be more of a party line vote if your turnout is low. But for me, I won 55% to 45%, so people knew the office was so bad before, they don't hear any complaints now. We have good outreach, letting people know how we do things, I do seminars for local clubs, maybe about 6 times a year. Historical societies really enjoy hearing about the old documents.

Your website has a link to "Curious Historic Documents" which is not live yet. What sorts of things do you have planned for that?

We have slave manumissions, releases of slavery. There is also an account from the 1700's of an Indian attack, I believe it may have been the French and Indian War, and it was filed so that a soldier who was injured with a musket ball through his hand could collect a pension from the county commissioners. It describes the whole attack and what happened to him. There's one that's an account of a bar fight in the borough of Hamburg, in the 1770's or 1780's. This man had the unfortunate circumstance of having the lower part of his left ear bitten off by this other guy. And back then if you were a felon, they cut the bottom of your left ear off to mark you as a felon. So he had this document, signed by the guy who bit him, recorded in our office so that if he would come to a place where he was unacquainted, then he could prove he wasn't a felon. We also have paternity settlements from the 1800's, and also things like documentation of the burial of radioactive materials. I have it all planned out just haven't been able to get it up yet.

How often do people come in seeking out information, or for help, about their own house?

All the time. It's either on the web, or they'll call us, they might get stuck. People all over the country looking for information on people who lived here generations ago. I've been sort of impressed with how many older individuals have gotten so adept at using the computer and are on our website. We even have people come in, from time to time, that think their house is haunted. One was even highlighted on Animal Planet once, with a house where the animals got freaked out. The people living there had the impression of the name Sarah, so we were able to trace it back and sure enough there was a Sarah who had lived there at that time. And I think they were able to go back further and find death records for her and everything. But yeah, people just want to know, especially if they have an old house, they come in to find out and search. Unfortunately, I think some people do their research on our website and don't quite know what they are looking at-- we actually have much less research questions than we had before, with everything online now. But people love it, alot of them are just doing this research on their own.

Many thanks again to Fred for his time in answering these questions and to making more historic documents accessible and available to the public!

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Re-Examining the Previous Layouts of the House

As far as I have been able to discern thus far, the floor plan layout of my house has gone through at least four significantly different iterations. I took my first shot at one of these previous layouts several months ago, after discovering evidence of a now-abandoned kitchen at the back of the house. In hindsight, those conjectures were incorrect after further investigation. Now, given the benefit of a lengthy conversation recently with long-time owner Catherine Cantlin's daughter-in-law, I take pause to examine what I know in terms of the layout history. The evidence gathered has been documentary, anecdotal, and physical. The first floor has always been the only real occupied space, with the unfinished basement below and the attic above. What follows is my present understanding of how the layout has changed throughout ithe house's roughly 93-year history.

Original Layout (c. 1923 to 1940s)

During its first 15-20 years, this house was one of the only ones in existence on the block, and it was a very modest home at roughly 750 square feet. Although I do not believe it was a mail-order kit house, the design may have been found in a pattern book I have yet to locate. This kit model sold by Montgomery Ward in 1930 is very close to what I believe to be the original layout of the house. Here is my own sketch:

Throughout its existence, the left half of the plan has generally contained living spaces, while the right half has contained bedrooms. Originally, one entered from the front porch into a modest-sized living room. This room has always held a view through a large cased opening into what is now the kitchen but was originally the dining room. Beyond the dining room was an enclosed kitchen at the rear of the house, off of which was an exit to the backyard. These functions in these locations were confirmed by the Cantlin daughter-in-law. Just to the left of the back steps was an exit staircase from the basement (a set of steps which still exists today but is entombed beneath my living room). I consider it a pretty safe assumption that the stacked staircases to the basement and attic remain today in their original locations. On the right side of the house, the main bedroom was off of the living room, with a second bedroom at the back, and the house's only bathroom was sandwiched in between the two.

New Rear Addition; Duplex Phase 1 (1940s to early 1960s)

Perhaps ironically, I am a bit less sure about this iteration of the layout than I am of the original layout. The lack of clarity rests primarily in whether or not the rear addition was completed in one or two phases, and when. What I do know, positively, is that a rear porch, which constitutes the upper-left corner of the floor plan, was enclosed in 1946 to create more interior space (due to receipt of a copy of that 1946 building permit). The construction and design of the addition lead me to believe that the entire addition inclusive of the un-enclosed porch was built at one time, prior to 1946, with that porch enclosure occurring later. To date I have not been able to locate backup documentation. Here is what the plan may have looked like both before and after the porch was enclosed:

I believe that the gabled, primary portion of the addition may have included a third bedroom to the left and a second kitchen to the right. Off of the new bedroom would have been the porch-- and once enclosed, it expanded the size of the bedroom. During this time period, John and Catherine Cantlin's children were reaching adulthood and the parents portioned off half of their newly expanded house, creating a duplex for their family members. The second unit was not fully closed off from the main unit at this point, as it was family living there. According to their daughter-in-law, all three of the adult children lived in the apartment at some point. The left-side (main) unit contained the connected living/dining room, the original kitchen, and the near rear bedroom. The right-side apartment contained entry from the rear into a new door at the new kitchen. Then, progressing towards the front past the attic steps was the apartment living room, which could also double as a bedroom if required. The original bathroom may have been shared across both units during this time period-- the door opening accessing the hallway from the dining room may or may not have existed. Lastly, the original primary bedroom was now the main bedroom for the apartment.

Kitchen Relocated; Duplex Phase 2 (1960s to 2001)

Also according to the Cantlins' daughter-in-law, Catherine made some further changes after husband John's death in 1961. Most significantly, the house's original kitchen was converted into a new second bathroom. Permit records confirm this change and provide a date of November 1963. If there was indeed access to the original bathroom from the dining room at this time, it was closed off at this time. Kitchen cabinetry and plumbing was installed along the left-side wall of the dining room, turning it into an eat-in-kitchen.

The remainder of the duplex is as described in the previous iteration. The sketch above shows the Cantlins' newer rear bedroom expanded into the area of the porch enclosure.

Re-Birth as a Single-Family House (2001 to Present)

After Catherine Cantlin sold and vacated the house towards her later years, a young couple took ownership and set to work re-establishing functionality of the house as a single-family home.

The function of living room was relocated to the larger back room of the house, into what was previously Ms. Cantlin's bedroom. The second rear door off of the apartment kitchen was filled in. When exactly this kitchen was converted into a bedroom is unclear at this time, but the daughter-in-law reports that the house was still presented as a duplex when she helped sell the house in 2001, so it likely was not abandoned until that time. Both bathrooms were updated, and I believe it was during this ownership that the window at the original bathroom was filled in. An exterior deck was built at the back of the house, covering over both sets of concrete steps.


What exists now is a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom single-family home of approximately 1,100 square feet. For now, this layout works pretty well for us. We'd like it to be perhaps a bit larger, and I have some designs in my head, but we'll get to those in due time. This house is over 90 years old and has seen significantly more change than I realized when I set out on my research. Yet, the journey and the in-progress results are fascinating, as the house has shifted and morphed along with all of its occupants.

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Finding Physical Evidence: Second Back Door

My modest little bungalow was built in at least two stages. The first, the main house as seen today from the street, was built in the 1920's, likely around 1922-1923. As I've featured in a few previous blog posts, the rear portion of the house, which currently contains our living room and the third bedroom, was built as an addition with at least part of it built in 1946. With a back door exiting the house onto the back wood deck, I've always assumed that this was the entrance to the house's second living unit back when it was a duplex-- a neighbor had confirmed that tenants entered the house from a rear door. The wood deck was built within the last 15 years by my house's previous owners. Since the house is raised a few feet from grade, it was never difficult for me to peek underneath the deck to see the small set of concrete steps leading to the back door, as well as a concrete patio at the bottom.

However, after speaking with a woman who lived in my house from 1958-1961, something seemed off about her description of the house's previous duplex layout. Having seen the current photos of the house which I had sent her, she had relayed to me that the addition of the deck onto the back of the house had made it look quite different from what she knew. Then, in running through the sequence of rooms which were part of the second unit, she described entrances into the house at both Catherine Cantlin's bedroom (my current living room) as well as into the kitchen of the second living unit. Glossing over this fact at first in my mind, it did not quite register-- during the conversation I simply listened as she ran through the layout, assuming that tenants or family member occupants had shared the front entrance door with Catherine.

But looking back at this conversation the next day, and revisiting the layout she described, the access to the second unit wasn't making sense in that arrangement. Then for some reason, it clicked in my mind and realized that what she was describing in that brief instant was a second back door to the house, one which gave direct access to the unit. Looking at a straight-on view of the rear addition, you can see the main A-framed gable roof portion of the old addition to the left, taking up about 2/3 of the back elevation. To the right is a former porch which was enclosed, with the current back door all the way to the right.

Look at the main structure on the left, and at the blank portion to the left of the windows-- this blank space throws off the symmetry of the gable elevation. In my wandering daydreams of future additions, I have often thought of making this whole rear addition one big "great room", and perhaps relocating the rear entrance to the location of that blank space. Now, it makes perfect sense why I might have thought to do so-- because it had already been that way!

Now, let's looking even more closely. The asbestos shingle siding at this area is not quite straight and true, as you can see some variation as if this portion of the wall is "bubbling" out a tiny bit. There are a few areas where courses of siding are not quite exactly aligned (look below the left edge of the window trim, and also right near the deck railing)-- evidence that a former opening had been covered over and new siding patched in.

Now, even closer. At the junction between the siding and the wood deck, you can see evidence of a wood door threshold I had never noticed before, just peeking out. It may be a bit difficult to tell in the photo, but it is about 3 feet long, the right size for a door, and is clearly different wood than that of the exterior deck:

And finally, let's take another peek underneath the deck at this area. I had done so previously, but only with a quick glance and never with a flashlight, as this corner of the house is blocked by a plastic toy/bike shed which we use and has been there since we moved in. Now, we look underneath the deck here and what do we see?

A second set of concrete steps, with presumably jack-hammered pieces of the old concrete patio piled on it! It is now clear that this was the back door referenced by my neighbor (he never had a reason to get more specific with me). This was the direct entrance into the second living unit in the house, entering directly into what was the unit's kitchen. In their remodel of the house and in the process of reclaiming it as a single-family house (which I still need to get an account of), the former owners of 2001-2014 appear to be the ones who have covered over this entrance, and eventually placed a new closet here on the interior side, turning it into the house's third bedroom.

This was quite an exciting discovery, fueled by my conversation with someone who lived in my house over 55 years ago!

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Information From a Former Occupant of the House

Just before the New Year, I penned an article here called "The Importance of Contacting Your House's 'Descendants'" which described why it is so important for you to attempt to contact living persons who are connected to your house's history. This is THE most likely way to find the most elusive types of information-- about layout (or other physical) changes, the personalities/lives of former owners and occupants, and perhaps even photographs. The article also described ways in which you can go about finding these living sources and how to respectfully approach them. Finally, I presented an intro to what has led to some of my most important discoveries to date:

"The most successful result, however, was with one of the daughters-in-law (edit: of my house's longtime owners John & Catherine Cantlin), who by chance has lived within my same neighborhood for decades. I found contact information including the telephone number and address in a phone directory, and started off by writing a simple letter and including some current photographs of the interior and exterior of the house. I did not receive a response, so after a couple of months I made a simple phone call. On the receiving end was the daughter-in-law, who was delightful to talk to, who HAD received my letter (but had not responded only because she assumed she had no useful information for me), and who proceeded to have a very nice conversation with me about what I've found to date and about what she recalled."

I sent my initial letter to the daughter-in-law (who I believe is in her 70's) towards the end of the summer of 2015 (around when I started Home Scribe History) and decided to make the cold call in early November. We spoke for roughly 20 minutes and I kept very detailed notes. What follows here is a brief summary of what I found out from her in the first of what is hopefully multiple conversations with her:

• The daughter-in-law herself, who was married to John and Catherine's (now deceased) youngest son, lived in the "apartment" side of the house from 1958-1961. This confirms that she has some serious memories and knowledge about the house.
• She confirmed that the house, for a significant part of its history (as early as the 1950's through to at least 2001), was a duplex and not merely a single-family home as it was originally and is today. This is something I discovered previously and detailed in my post from late September "This Single-Family Was Once a Duplex" and was triggered by the discovery of a piece of duct tape in the basement labeling piping for the "Old Kitchen". The layouts I presented in that post were far from correct, largely due to the fact that the layout had changed much more than I realized. She did, however, confirm that what is presently my 3rd bedroom was formerly the apartment kitchen.
• She confirmed the youngest Cantlin son's (her husband's) birth year as 1933. Additionally, she informed me that he was born in the home.
• She and her husband had helped sell the house in 2001 after Catherine moved out to a nursing home at the age of 95. At that time, no significant changes were made in preparation for selling the house beyond some new carpets and minor cosmetic improvements. She confirmed some termite remediation which was found during my home inspection.
• I was informed that after John Cantlin's death in 1961, Catherine Cantlin undertook additional layout changes on the half of the house where she lived. Most significantly, I learned that what is now the second bathroom (between the current kitchen and the current living room) was previously the original kitchen of the house. After John's death, this became a bathroom, and the former dining room became what is today Kitchen/Dining.
• Her understanding is the same as mine that the house already existed when the Cantlins bought it in 1932. She relayed an anecdote that was told to her that the Cantlins had lived in Philadelphia previously (which I knew from census research) and had moved out to Glenside, at one point renting a house on Roberts Avenue less than a mile away from my house. Catherine had been trying to decide between the Roberts Avenue house and this one, ultimately choosing this one. She believes they rented the house before buying it, as I suspected based on their purchasing deed.
• The neighboring lot used to be owned by Catherine Cantlin as part of her lot. This lot now contains my neighbor's house. According to the daughter-in-law, Catherine sold the lot off 30 or so years ago. Records seem to indicate that it may have been sold in 1973, 43 years ago.
• She confirmed that the old stone stove in the backyard has been there since at least when she lived here, so she pegged it as at least as early as 1956-57. She was not sure who physically built it, and did not believe her father-in-law did. She relayed that it was heavily used, and that the Cantlins liked to entertain, especially on July 4th.

This single conversation gave me alot to work with-- alot of new leads to research further. It gave me alot of detail that I likely would never have learned without contacting former occupants of the house. I will say that I probably caused this woman to be confused more than a few times, referring to a living room that she never knew as a living room, and I kept thinking she was referring to rooms in the back of the house when she meant the front. This confusion was simply because the house has seen a significant number of changes, so both of us had come from it based on our own understanding of the house. I did ask her if she could recall any photographs which might show the house in some of these earlier decades. She said that she would check, and would also check with her sister-in-law (the other living Cantlin daughter-in-law) who might be more likely to have such things.

I followed this phone call up with another letter shortly thereafter, enclosing a few sketched out floor plans asking some additional questions and to ensure that I understood our conversation correctly. I will post more about any follow up information as it arises, but I hope this demonstrates the potential value to your house history research!

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Saturday Spotlight- Circa 1910 American Foursquare in Pottstown

This week's Saturday Spotlight house is a brick American Foursquare in the borough of Pottstown, PA.

The American Foursquare style is very common in more densely populated areas and is pretty easy to spot and identify. This particular house measures approximately 1,800 square feet. This type of house is also referred to as the "Prairie Box" or "Classic Box" because it, well, looks like a box. It was one of the dominant styles of house architecture during its peak in popularity from 1900 to 1920. As seen in this example, they are nearly always two stories, and two-ranked, with a hipped or pyramidal roof. There is usually a center dormer, as seen here-- this house has a dormer on all four sides of the roof. It is a symmetrical form, yet the symmetry is broken with an offset entrance.

The first floor is often raised up a bit from ground level in the Foursquare, creating opportunity for basement windows as well as a stepped entrance. In this example, the dimensional stone of the building's foundation is presented as its finished exterior material up to that raised first floor elevation, with the brick masonry above constituting the primary aesthetic. It is pretty rare to see an American Foursquare without a front porch, and here we see a porch roof supported by simple, classically inspired columns. The rear side of the house continues the basic box form and center dormer at the roof. There is a one-story ell, which, if I had to guess, was built later, since it appears to be sort of "squeezed-in" to the left of the first floor rear door. A second porch covers this rear entrance and creates a balcony off of the second floor. You can see from this photo that two of the original windows have been bricked-in.

Origins

While County information lists an estimated construction date of 1900, there are no entries in 1900 or 1910 census enumeration schedules for this address, while the immediate neighbors are listed. An 1897 map does corroborate that there was no house here at that time. I think that it is likely that the house was built between 1910 and 1919. The earliest known owners were John J. O'Connor, an English-born detective, and his PA-born wife Sarah O'Connor. They occupied the home, along with their adopted daughter Esther, as early as March of 1919, when John passed away after contracting a form of cancer. Sarah and Esther continued on at the brick house, and as Sarah did not have an occupation of her own at this time, the presence of two boarders at the house in 1920 may have been out of financial necessity. The boarders were 38-year-old Lawrence Walch, a civil engineer at a blast furnace, and 34-year-old James Maney, a mechanic at a tire factory. It is unclear at this time what happened to Sarah and Esther O'Connor after 1920. Sarah perhaps re-married and moved on with a new surname, while Esther may have found her own husband, making both less-easily found in later census records.

By 1930, Robert W. Evans had bought and moved into the Foursquare home along with his wife, Elizabeth. At that time they had a 1-year-old son, Robert Jr. Robert W. Evans Sr. was born in nearby Limerick and had a farming background, but after marrying Elizabeth, they moved to Pottstown, where Robert established a real estate brokerage and insurance agency in 1910. Robert W. Evans Real Estate and Insurance became a very successful family business, as Robert Jr. eventually joined as an adult in 1950 and later took over the business. The Evans family lived at this particular house at least from 1930-1940, but had clearly moved onto a different residence in the eastern part of Pottstown by the time of Robert Sr's death in 1955.

Vintage sign advertising one of Robert Evans' rentals; photo found on an Ebay listing

1970s to Present

In 1975, the home came under the stewardship of the Fagley family. Firstly, from 1975 to 1977 the house was owned by Pearle V. Fagley, who at the time was in her 70's. Although Ms. Fagley did not pass on until 1984, in 1977 ownership of the house transferred to her grandson, who owned the house until 2007. Unfortunately, in early 2015, the house appears to have fallen into a bit of disrepair and was foreclosed on. Fannie Mae became the new owner and based on the amount of consideration in the public record, may have offered the previous owner some considerations as part of its Cash for Keys program, or as a Deed-In-Lieu of Foreclosure, to speed up proceedings. It was listed for sale through Fannie Mae's HomePath program, and less than two months later, a business owner from a neighboring town purchased the house, perhaps with the intent of either flipping it for re-sale or renting it out to tenants. Based on some of the interior photos from the HomePath listing, most of the interior charm and character which likely existed throughout its earlier decades is either covered over or gone completely, likely in the 1970's and/or 1980's. However, I see some stained glass as well as the remainder of some staircase detail at the interior front entry! Here's to hoping this house has a bright (and hopefully restored) future.

Photo courtesy of HomePath. Some historical details DO remain! Great windows!

Photo courtesy of HomePath. Paneling, linoleum, formica, dropped ceilings = charm?

Photo courtesy of HomePath. Bay at the side of the first floor. The wall on the right covers over a former window,

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