How to Research the History of your House
Why?
- National Register of Historic Places
- Local historic districts and landmarks
- Tax credits
- Preservation Durham plaque program
- For fun
Beginning
- Know your house
- Inspect
- Photograph
- Examine the neighborhood
- Talk to long-time neighbors
- Points of reference
- Street address
- Name of owner
- Age
Someone else may already have done it!
- Durham Architectural and Historic Inventory
- Book
- N.C. State Historic Preservation Office, Raleigh
- Durham County Historic Inventory
- National Register of Historic Places nominations
- Accuracy
Quick confirmation
- Maps
- Field guides
- Inventories
- Tax records - Old County Courthouse
Brass tacks
- Using Hill’s city directories
- By occupant name
- By address
- Occupations and businesses
- Advertisements
- City limits and the 1925 problem
- Street names and area names
- Rental properties
- Accuracy
Using the newspaper
- Two newspapers
- Obituaries
- Real estate ads
- Articles
Other references
- Durham and Her People
- City and county histories
- Durham Historic Photographic Archive
- College and high school yearbooks
- Planning documents
- Odd bits
Outside the Library, but not too far
- Tax Records, Land Records and Tax Offices - Old County Courthouse
- Listings
- Maps
- Register of Deeds Office - Old County Courthouse
- Plats
- Indexes, Deed and Mortgage books
- Estates Office, Clerk of Court - Durham County Judicial Building
- Shortcomings
Permissible inferences and interpolations
- Identify your guesses – it’s OK
- Trust what you see on the ground
- Trust contemporary primary sources particular to your property
- Architect’s plans
- Diaries, letters, first-person accounts
- Use references together logically – none are perfectly reliable
- Remember, a house may be older that the maps, plats, directories, and other records say it is. However, it will almost never be younger.
Updated 4/09
