This Single-Family Was Once a Duplex

Last week, I described the evidence that I found in my house of an "old kitchen", no longer in use, and how I pondered whether the house's kitchen had been relocated once, if not twice. Having thought through the unlikely scenario that the house's original kitchen was abandoned for a kitchen located at what is now the rear third bedroom (and then relocated back), the matter did not receive much further analysis until a visit to the Township's building department. While I will describe this visit in more detail in...

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Saturday Spotlight- Circa 1900 Stone Victorian in Ambler

This week's Saturday Spotlight house is a relatively modest stone Queen Anne Victorian in downtown Ambler, PA. Ambler is a borough rich with turn-of-the-century stone houses, many of them being twin homes. This single-family example of approximately 2,400 square feet exhibits the waning of Victorian style around 1900, being much less decorative than most Queen Annes from the late 19th century. Still, this house has the scalloped shingles and turned posts on the front porch you would expect. As typical of a Victorian,...

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Finding Physical Evidence: Old Kitchen?!?

Researching the history of your house must undoubtedly involve a thorough inspection of the inside and outside of your home with an eye trained towards unearthing clues. In previous posts, I have already touched on a few physical clues, such as those that tip off a previous rear addition, and the covering over of an exterior window in one of the bathrooms. A few short months after moving into the house, before I got heavily involved in researching its history, I was in the basement trying to get a better understanding...

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Examining a 20-Year-Old Photograph of the House

Today, we examine a photograph of my house first presented in my post on Browsing On-line County Databases. The Montgomery County assessment office maintains a profile for each property on record, and most of those include a photograph of the house, if a house exists on the property. In my experience, most of these photographs are from the days before digital cameras, meaning by this point in 2015 they are at least 15-year-old photos, or older. Circa 1990 Photograph of my house, courtesy of Montgomery County PA This...

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Saturday Spotlight-- Circa 1934 Colonial Revival in Huntingdon Valley

This week's Saturday Spotlight house is a charming little brick and stucco Colonial Revival home in Huntingdon Valley, PA. As we mentioned in our last Saturday Spotlight post, Colonial Revival homes can be quite eclectic-- in fact, many realtors use the term "Colonial" as a catch-all of sorts to describe a home that has a traditional style but does not neatly fall into another category. The "Revival" in "Colonial Revival" is important in order to distinguish a vintage home such as this (1930s) from a truly Colonial...

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Analyzing the House's Info Found in Online County Databases

In the last post, I located a significant amount of information for the house via two separate online county databases-- that of the county's tax assessing board and that of the county's Recorder of Deeds. Here, we will expand upon some of this information and offer up what it means to our house history research. We can also take this information and use it to search other places for even further information. Recap- What We Found Between the two databases, this is a summary of the NEW information we found: 2001...

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Browsing On-Line County Databases for House History Information

When a home sale occurs, the transaction becomes a matter of public record once it is recorded in the appropriate local government office (thus providing explanation for the slew of mortgage refinance and other related offers you will receive in the mail). Throughout the United States, this is usually at the county level, most often at the department of the Recorder of Deeds, Register of Deeds, or some similar name. This department will become very important to us when we go to chain the title of our property. Before...

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Saturday Spotlight-- Circa 1937 Stone Colonial in Wyncote

Welcome to the Saturday Spotlight! Post #6 and I'm already creating a recurring segment? Sure, why not? On the weekly Saturday Spotlight, I will highlight a house in the suburban Philadelphia area (probably will be heavily Montco-based to start) and will give a brief snapshot of it's history-- at least whatever history I can piece together in a relatively short amount of time. I'll feature both large houses and small houses, and will showcase a wide array of architectural styles. I'll look at homes from the 20th...

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Census Records- An Essential Building Block for Your House History

If you've ever poked around ancestry.com, or talked to a genealogist, or looked into your own family history, then you've likely learned that census records, especially the U.S. Federal Census taken every 10 years, are one of the most essential sets of historical records for genealogical research. The Essential Building Block Family researchers are instructed to try to gather as many census records for their ancestors as possible, and upon viewing a digital image of a census population schedule, it is easy to see...

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Ferguson's North Glenside

In my last post on Using Maps, the 1937 map I shared was the most colorful. Let's take a look at that one again: The varying colors apply to different land subdivisions. A subdivision is exactly what it sounds like-- a much larger piece (tract) of land, usually farmland or the property of a large estate, has been divided into much smaller parcels for the purposes of development. You are probably most familiar with residential subdivisions, and you have likely seen a plethora of subdivisions get developed during...

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Using Maps to (More Closely) Date the House

A neighbor, who has been in his house since the 1970s, told me that the elderly woman (the Ms Cantlin mentioned in previous post) who owned the house until 2001 may have been the original owner along with her husband. Ms Cantlin also had relayed to my neighbor at some point that her house was one of the first in the neighborhood. One used to be able to see all the way from the house down to the Ardsley train station 1/2 mile away, according to this account, prior to the bulk of the development of the Ardsley neighborhood...

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