House Histories: A Guide to Tracing the Genealogy of Your Home

by Sally Light

Explains how to establish the history of a house by examining the building style and materials and searching for clues in old documents, and offers suggestions for running a home-based house histories business

Genres: Architecture

300 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1989

Reviews

[Kathy KS · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5*

Although dated, there is some interesting information about construction and uses of homes during American history. Some of the research information about the property records is still useful, as long as one remembers much has changed about what is now available for research online (this one was first published in 1989, well before the world wide web and the explosion of digital resources to search). The last part of the book also might still be helpful for those considering researching house histories as a business; as long as one extrapolates into the digital age...

Two main things bothered me with this presentation, however.

The first was the dearth of information about architecture, construction, research into houses constructed in the plains states and most of those west. The book mainly discusses homes first constructed in the 1660-early 1900s. Most of the western half of the United States wasn't actually settled until the last half of the 1900s and beyond. The house my parents purchased in Kansas in 1969 was built in the 1920s. Since we sold that in 2024, my parts of my family lived there for over half the life of the house. They did do some addition and updates to the home, but it was still an old house. Does that make it any less interesting for the new owners (or us, as former owners) to know the history of the place? I'd say not. I will admit that I could relate some of the information in the book to our former homeplace: the addition, pre-1969, of an enclosed "back porch" (utility room) and bathroom was definitely not the same construction. My parents, in 1969, had the attic remodeled into three bedrooms and a bathroom with stall shower, still complete with the paneling, carpeting, and colors of the 1960-70s. My point here is that more modern houses have history; crumbling foundations, settling walls, small rooms downstairs, painted woodwork restored to glory, and doors/windows closed off. OK, rant over.

My second issue is that the record research mostly overlaps with genealogical research. The author does mention various aspects of researching families, but she often uses terminology that is not usually found in genealogical research texts. For instance, when she talks about early land patents, she says something like "federal land grants". I can't remember her ever mentioning "bounty land warrants", a term covered in most land record research books. This is just one example, but the one that really jumped out at me.

So, do I recommend? There may be newer on the topic that would be better, but I haven't researched that; this has been on my TBR since 2013. There is some good information if you member how dated it is. The illustrations were useful to a point, but I would have liked more detail and/or explanation.

PS-- the glued binding has dried over the years. The copy I borrowed from my library had pages falling out as I read... The first few pages had already been secured with paperclips before I even received it.

[Desiree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, informative, and cool to read. I feel that there could have been far more illustrations detailing various building styles (often, several were mentioned but only one or two illustrated, leaving me wondering about the others...); even though they are line-drawing-only, more would have been very helpful.

What a great side business (researching house histories for others) for retirees, SAHMs, etc... - Seems like a lot of work, but fascinating stuff.