Re: Speaker for Researching House History

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SARA STEELE (smsteele@wisc.edu)
Thu, 9 Jan 2020 19:22:42 +0000



From: SARA STEELE <smsteele@wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Speaker for Researching House History
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2020 19:22:42 +0000
Message-id: <2392dcb1-e4be-97a9-7ea9-1c37ef2e98a0@wisc.edu>

Hi Patti

I'm not a speaker, nor can I suggest anyone.  The six pages someone mentioned may be very helpful.  This is an area where you may want to build  your own expertise, because the stories of houses make up one kind of history of your community.

At present I am trying to put together histories of two  or three houses, so I've doing some thinking about the processes and some of these ramblings might be of help to you until you find the speaker.

One step is visually trying to pin down the time period when the house was built and how the house in question may relate to other houses and what was going on in the village or township during that general period.  .

Besure to determine whether  it is the building itself or if it is the people who lived in it first or early that are of interest.  Regardless of the answer, if the house was built before building permits were issued, the name of the first owner is going to have to be located which may mean following plat books, if it is a country house, or going to the Register of Deeds office and finding who filed the first plat plan and the date, and then following land records for the purchaser.  Then use a variety of sources to learn about that owner and if it were likely he built the house.

Sources include any diaries of the period you already have in your collection, reading newspapers from the period you think the house was built, looking at family trees to see if there is a descendant that might know--the kind of things that one does to prepare a family history.

IF  the person asking goes ahead and especially if one of the HS volunteers helps, be sure to add a copy of what they find to your archives and use it as a reference and example when the next person comes along.

Sara

smsteele@wisc.edu

Former CGAHS archivist

n 1/9/2020 11:34 AM, marsicano@charter.net wrote:

> Hi -
>
> I was wondering if anyone can suggest a speaker who could teach how to
> research the history of your house?
>
> We have more and more people coming in to see if we have the history
> of their house and I'd love to have a workshop to teach people how to
> do it.
>
> Any suggestions?  We are located in SE Wisconsin.  Thank you!
>
> Patti Marsicano
> Delavan Historical Soceity



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This archive was generated on Thu Jan 09 2020 - 14:42:47 Central Standard Time