A few years ago I bought a house, and because I was curious about whether or not I had ghosts, I started doing some research on the house. At first I was able to find a few names by looking at the deeds for the house using Salem Deeds. From my research, the house dates back to the 1880s. I still don’t have a precise date of when it was built, but it started showing up on maps of the area by the early 1900s.
There have been quite a few people who’ve lived here, with lots of children. Owners and renters both. And I have confirmed that there were a few deaths in the house, and the funerals were held in the house as well. Back then, that was what they did, rather than using a funeral home.
I’m still not sure if any of these people are still in the house, but the stairs do creak a bit when no one’s on them. So perhaps I have some. But the interesting story I found while doing my research on the street and surrounding houses is that there used to be a house in between mine and the one on the corner. The only thing there now is a very large tree.
How did I come to find out this information, you might ask?
It all came about while browsing through Sanborn Insurance maps. These are a certain type of map that was created of all the houses in a town, so that it could be used for insurance purposes. But sometimes they offer more information to the normal person, like when a house shows up on the map, it’s shape, what type of dwelling it was, and how much land surrounded it. The link I used contains maps for Massachusetts, so you may need to do some research to find ones in your area.
I noticed the house while looking for my own and found it curious. The last time the house appeared on the street was in 1930, and by 1945 it was gone. No note about where it went, and there’s nothing left of it now. No foundation exists on the spot where it should be. Just dirt, a wire fence and some bushes.
I knew I had a proper mystery on my hands, and today I was able to solve it. It wasn’t easy. I had to dig through lots of newspaper articles, census records, deeds and city directories in order to verify where the house ended up. Most of the census information came from Ancestry.com.
A few months ago I found one of the best resources for local news when I stumbled upon the digital collection of Amesbury Daily News issues at the Amesbury Public Library. There’s also a collection of Newburyport Daily News issues in a separate collection. Both have been quite helpful in finding things out about the people who lived and died in my house. This link shows archives across the United States that could be very helpful.
Today I found an article about a house on my street that had been moved to another street in town in 1934. There was no street number listed, so this didn’t give me definitive information, but I had a hunch that it was the house that disappeared.
Using the Sanborn maps, I compared all the addresses on my street, to see which ones were missing before and after this house had been moved. Fortunately, only one number on the street was missing. It also coincided with one more house added to the street it was being moved to. So now I had a new address to look up.
I then compared all this to census records from 1930 and 1940. Again, the house that used to be next to mine did not appear in the 1940 census on my street.
I still haven’t found a deed that shows the man who moved the house in the newspaper article owned the house. But looking at a picture of the house on google makes me think this was the tiny house that used to sit next to mine. And there are no other places on my street where a house is missing. All are accounted for.
I still have a bit of research to do about all this, but at least I know what happened to the house. My initial theory was that it burned down, but I couldn’t find any articles about a fire. Thinking about it now, the idea of a house being moved never even crossed my mind. It’s not a common practice but is still done from time to time.
Tips for looking into your own house history:
- Start with your own deed, and write down information on who the previous owner was, and the information related to the previous deed, where it was recorded, the book and page number, etc… This will give you a starting place to trace the sales history of the house
- Most deeds are public information and can be searched using the street address, name of owners, or if you know the exact book and page you can enter that too. Not sure if all records are available in every place across the Unites States, but in most cases deeds can be easy to find.
- Once you find deeds, you’ll start compiling names of people who lived in or bought the house. In order to see who actually lived there, you’ll need to look at city directories and census records. Census records only go up to 1940 at the present time, and occurred every 10 years. The 1890 census is missing due to a massive fire that destroyed most of the records. Otherwise, records go as far back as 1810. The ones that give the most reliable house information start in 1870.
- If your house if relatively newer, you won’t find too much historical information, but you might be able to find recent plans in your towns’ town hall.
- When searching newspaper articles, try searching the street name with and without the street number of the house. Also, search for past owner names or neighbors. This proved especially helpful in my research.
- As a last resort, if you know dates of when sales happened, you can browse individual dates to see if you can find real estate sales records or tax records that were printed in the paper.
And if all else fails, and you hit a brick wall, I am always eager to dig in and solve a good mystery. I have a few I’m still attempting to figure out for some friends.