New Mapping Feature Added to Saturday Spotlight Archive

Today I've added a neat new mapping feature to Home Scribe History's archive of Saturday Spotlight posts, which can be seen here. Using Google Maps, I've plotted, onto a single map, all eleven (11) of the featured houses about which I've written a brief historical summary to date. This definitely helps me as I choose houses to feature, as I continue to hope to cover a broad geographical cross-section through the Philadelphia area. I have to provide some more representation to Bucks, Delaware, and Delaware counties,...

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Anatomy of the 1920 Deed from Reginald Ferguson to Frederick Brandes

Today we take a detailed look at the June 4, 1920 property deed which conveyed the land on which my home was later built, from Reginald T. Ferguson to Frederick A. Brandes. If you'll recall from some of my previous posts, Reginald Ferguson was a jeweler by trade in North Philadelphia, and had purchased a sizable tract of land in Abington from a Mrs. Emma Spear a few years prior. He then hired a surveyor to subdivide the land into individual home-building lots, a subdivision recorded with the name "Ferguson's North...

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Saturday Spotlight- Circa 1915 Eclectic Home in Mount Airy

This week's Saturday Spotlight takes us across the city limits into Philadelphia for the first time, with an eclectically styled home on Lincoln Drive in the West Mount Airy neighborhood. Image via Google Street View Ever since I moved to Glenside, one thing I have very much enjoyed is that I no longer am forced to drive the hellish interstate that is the Schuylkill Expressway when I want to drive to Center City Philadelphia. Instead, I am treated to the meandering thoroughfares of the Cresheim Valley Road and...

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Braindump: What Items Are on My Research To-Do List?

So, research on the bungalow has slowed a bit lately. It's not for a lack of leads or places to search for more information, however. With a full-time job and a limit to what can be found online, I've not recently had the chance to get back to the Montgomery County Courthouse to make more substantial progress. With that said, there are several items which I have discovered but not yet shared here and will do so in the near future. Still, I figure this time to be appropriate to do a sort of "brain dump" exercise to...

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