Research History of our Home

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Exciting News - August 2009

Forget any research that we needed to do because one Saturday morning the original owners stopped by when we were outside with our baby girl.

This was one of the best days of the summer. We finally found out the history of our home. Antoinette and her son Stephen took the time to tell us the history of our home and we were delighted to find out Antoinette's father built the home from a Sears plan. We gave Antoinette and Stephen a tour of the home and showed them the work that we have done since we moved in. They filled us in on the layout of the original house and many great stories of the years that they lived in the house. They sold the house in the early nineties and loved the house very much. Stephen sent us the photos below which we will always treasure.

We never imagined having a photo of the original plan. What a treasure.

Here is a photo of Antoinette on her wedding day 11/28/1953. Antoinette moved in when she was just a baby and was born only a few blocks away.

Here is William the man that built this wonderful house in the early 1920's. Stephen is pictured in this photo

with his Grandpa. This picture was taken on 6/23/58.

Stephen and his Grandma (Antoinette's mom). The date on the picture is May 1964.

Here is the house with the orignal cedar shingles and no extension. The house still has most of the original details. Antoinette is pictured in this photo with her father's Pontiac.

The picture was taken during the war, so 1942 - 1945 sometime.

This picture shows the house with the original back porch before the extension was put in.

The extension was built during the summer of 1962.

Here is a picture taken in 1961 of Stephen and his brothers and a sister. The tree pictured is the Japanese Maple that died last year. It was difficult to cut the tree down that had so much history. We tried everything to save it.

This picture was taken in the mid 1980's.

We found out that the concrete in the back that we uncovered was where the original garage stood. We would like to thank Antoinette and Stephen for stopping by and for the history of the house and the photos. It made us know for sure that the house was built with love and loved by many.

Here are the details of the original reseach and how we were mainly at a dead end until we met Antoinette and Stephen.

March 2008

We do not know too much about the history of our home. All we know right now is that it was built in the 1920's. Reasearching the history of your home can be a big project and very time consuming. We enlisted the help of a historic preservationist to begin our research. We also contacted our local histocial society asking for any information they may have.

Here is what we have so far:

When we first started to clean up our garden we found a large concrete slab under layers of dirt and weeds. This immediately peaked our interest as what could have been built on that slab. When we started to dig around it we found pieces of depression glass, old bottles, old wagon wheels, large animal bones and other odd pieces of glass. Our neighbor told us that he also had a piece of concrete slab on his property. This could mean that our land was part of a homestead and the concrete slab could have been an outbuilding. Was it a smokehouse? An old barn? We are not sure yet but will continue to do research.

The Historical Society could not find our street on any of their maps and believed all of the land surrounding our home belonged to the Jones family and then the Gildersleeves and then Blydengurg family. They also have record of the Cosgrove family having a homestead there. They suggested we contact the local library as they may have a map. They also suggested that we go to our local highway department to find a map. The names of the families that owned land in the area is a big help as we now have something to go by.

Our plan is to make a family tree for our home and try to go back as far as we could to see if we can find the original family and then also who the land belonged to before the house was built.

One interesting thing that is fun to do is drive around your neighborhood looking for similar houses. We found quite a few and will take some photos to post soon.

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