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Have you ever been curious about the people who lived in your house before you? Maybe they were famous. Or notorious.
Researching your house's history is a bit like solving a mystery; one chapter leads to another. With a little legwork you can find out all sorts of interesting things, including the names - and sometimes the occupations - of the people who lived in the house before you, how long they lived there and what they paid for it. If you have a historic house, you might be able to find early photographs of it at the Connecticut State Library or on its website.
"It's detective work," said Carol Laun, archivist at Granby's Salmon Brook Historical Society. "Once you find out who lived in a house, it puts life into the story because there are real people."
Recently, while tracing the history of a historic house on Lost Acres Road in Granby, Laun discovered that a woman who lived there during the Civil War had written a book similar to "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the book on slavery that made the author Harriet Beecher Stowe famous when it was published in 1852.
The Granby woman's book was published before Stowe's book, but "didn't catch the public interest like 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did," said Laun, who found advertisements for the woman's book in the archives of The Courant.
If you have an old house, Laun suggests starting your research by contacting your local historical society.
"If you have a really old house, someone may have done the work for you," she said.
Laun keeps files on many of Granby's historic houses. Some files include research done by other people and stories told about the house, including ghost stories.
"Sometimes we have nothing; sometimes we have a lot," she said.
Exterior Features
Experts recommend starting research on your house by looking at its exterior to determine the style. A good book to consult is "A Field Guide to American Houses," by Virginia and Lee McAlester. The book has photographs and drawings of styles as they evolved from the 17th to the 20th centuries. By consulting the book and studying exterior features - the roof line, doors, windows and foundation -you can determine whether your house is built in the style of, say, a Georgian Colonial or a Queen Anne Victorian. Or it might be an eclectic mix of styles.
About.com also has a good guide for identifying the style of your home and tracing its genealogy at genealogy.about.com/od/house_histories.
To find the names of your house's past owners, follow the "paper trail" that begins in your local town clerk's office (some towns have this information on the web). As you "chain" back through the deeds to your house, you'll find out who bought and sold your house over the years. As you go back in time, you'll find deeds were handwritten instead of typed.
If you have an older house (built between the mid-1800s to the mid-1930s), you can find out the names and occupations of the previous residents by looking up your address in old city directory books. The Connecticut State Library has copies of local city directories published throughout the state from the mid-1800s to the 1930s, when they were replaced by phone books. Many libraries also have copies of city directories.
WPA Photographs
If you have a historic home, the Connecticut State Library may have a photograph of it taken in the 1930s, when the Works Progress Administration put architects to work surveying old houses in the state.
"It's a wonderful resource," said Carol Ganz, a reference librarian at the state library.
She said the library is in the process of digitalizing the photos so that they can be viewed online. They're doing so in alphabetical order, and so far they're up to Granby. If your town is further along in the alphabet, you can view photographs at the library.
Finding your old house won't be as easy as plugging in your address. Ganz said most of the historic houses photographed in the 1930s were at least 100 years old then and most did not have addresses. They're identified by descriptions of their locations (such as "faces north on south side of Farmington Avenue" ) Not all towns were surveyed by WPA workers and not every historic house was photographed, but you might get lucky and find a photograph of your house while scrolling - or sifting - through the photographs.
If you live in Hartford, the library has a small book, "Structures and Styles in Hartford," that identifies interesting houses and buildings and gives the names of the architects who designed them, Ganz said.
Check www.cslib.org/oldhouse.htm, the "Research Guide to Old Houses Resources at the Connecticut State Library," for more information.
Once you have the names of the people who lived in your house, check the archives of local newspapers to see if any articles were written about them, or if there are obituaries. Don't forget to ask neighbors if they know anything about the history of your house.
"All you need is patience, perseverance and time. Luck also helps," Betsy J. Green writes in her book, "Discovering the History of Your House: And Your Neighborhood."
She advises house-history hunters to be skeptical about information gleaned from people and public records.
"People make mistakes, both in official records and the things they tell you about your house," she writes. "As you gather information about the history of your home, keep asking yourself, 'Does this make sense? Does it agree or conflict with previous information I've found?'"
Old Probate Records
Consider yourself lucky if you discover your old house was bequeathed to an heir. That's because probate court records contain a wealth of information about people who lived in a house.
"Old probate records list every possession they had, down to the handkerchiefs," Laun said. "They contain more personal information, such as the names of the kids and what they're getting" through inheritance.
Laun said most old probate records show that houses were left to sons. But often, she said, provisions were made for widows by leaving "two rooms in the house, the privilege to use the kitchen, half the barn and a cow."
"That was security" for a widow, she said.
As for ghosts, Laun recalled researching the history of a house in Granby after several people living in it reported seeing the ghost of a young man dressed in a black suit and the ghost of a little girl dressed in a white dress.
Laun said she couldn't find any information about a young girl having lived in the house, but she did find out that in the 19th century a young man died in the house, which has since been torn down.
"They were benign ghosts," she said with a laugh. "The people who lived there, most of them just took them for granted."
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