House Histories by Sally Light: Guide to Tracing Your Home Genealogy

The text divides into six sections preceded by acknowledgments and introductions and succeeded by bibliography, glossary, and index.

The 97-page first section explains on-site inspections of:

• boundary markers (including fences, vegetation, walls);
• grounds (including gardens, vegetation, water features);
• house exteriors (including balconies, chimneys, doors, eaves, foundations, gutters, porches, roofs, verandas, walls, windows);
• house interiors (including ceiling heights, fastenings, flooring, room sizes, wall coverings and thicknesses);
• outbuildings.

Inspectors find that everything can be accomplished with just camera, flashlight, notebook, pen, and 25-foot (7.62-meter) measuring tape as equipment.

Door and woodwork fasteners, exterior and interior colors, and window pane sizes give insights into the age of the house, the identity of the builder, and the socio-economics of the owner/occupant. 

The 61-page second section gathers such written records as:

• correspondence;
• diaries;
• letters of administration for estate settlement executors;
• mortgages, movable (chattel) and real property deeds, personal property hereditaments, real property leases;
• public auction records;
• wills.  

Record-searching hones skills at deciphering pre-twentieth-century handwriting and drawing online maps from survey descriptions. It includes such secondary sources as:

• birth/death certificates, burial/marriage records;
• church, city, county, Masonic lodge, oral, telephone company, town histories;
• civil servant lists;
• fire company records, fire insurance company blotters;
• general store ledgers;
• newspapers;
• organizational rosters;
• school records.

The 31-page third section handles such graphic records as:

• aerial photos, architectural plans;
• city, county, town atlases/directories;
• county, federal, state censuses;
• insurance/urban assessment/permit/utility maps;
• road, tax lists;
• surveyor’s plats, surveys. 

The 23-page fourth section identifies such research takeaways as:

• pursuing historic registry;  
• writing annotated chronologies for albums and scrapbooks and publishable narratives (including abstract, family genealogy, house history, references, vocabulary).

The 20-page fifth section judges the house history-writing business organizational merits of:

• corporations;
• partnerships;
• sole proprietorships.

The 29-page sixth section keeps examples of on-site inspections and survey descriptions; explanations of court indexing systems and independent urban areas; lists of national archives and records center, historic preservation organization, park service, and state historical archive/society contact information.

House Histories leaves home genealogists culturally enriched, educationally entertained, geo-historically enthralled by:

• Margaret Eberle, illustrator;
• Golden Hill Press, Inc., publisher;
• Catherine Hopkins, designer;
• Ari Iacovini, Just Your Type-setter;
• Sarah B. Light, author. 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

A house may have an obvious history, such as author Ernest Hemingway's home in the Florida Keys, or an obscure history: all houses have histories.
907 Whitehead Street, Key West, Monroe County, Florida Keys, Florida; Saturday, June 3, 2006, 23:23: Andreas Lamecker, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hemingwayhouse.jpg

Diaries provide information about houses in which they are written and also about the writers and other dwellers.
Monday, June 26, 1937, diary entry by English novelist and poet Emily Brontë includes sketch of herself and Anne writing at the drawing room table.
"A bit past 4 o'clock . . . . Anne and I writing in the drawing room -- Anne a poem beginning "Fair was the Evening and brightly the Sun . . . .": Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sketch_by_Emily_Brontë_sgowing_herself_and_Anne_at_work_in_the_dining_room_of_the_parsonage..jpg

Census records offer helpful information for crafting home histories.
Pitcher commemorates the first United States census, ca. 1790, made in England.
National Museum of American History, Washington, DC: Daderot, Public Domain (CC0 1.0), via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pitcher_commemorating_the_first_United_States_census,_c._1790,_made_in_England_-_National_Museum_of_American_History_-_DSC06150.JPG

House histories may reveal their qualification for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), the United States federal government's official list of historically significant and/or artistically valuable properties.
The NRHP is administered by the National Park Service (NPS), an agency of the Department of the Interior.
typical plaque acknowledging NRHP-listed property; Monday, June 21, 2010, 19:10: Jonathunder, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HistoricPlacesNationalRegisterPlaque.JPG

House histories may reveal their qualification for listing as a National Historic Landmark (NHL), a place of outstanding historical significance.
F.F. Tomek House (Ferdinand Frederick and Emily Tomek House), known as Ship House; 1904 design by Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867-April 9, 1959); NHL and NRHP, Jan. 20, 1999; owned by Dutch-American artist Maya Moran Manny (born Aug. 31, 1934) since 1974
F.F. Tomek House, 150 Nuttall Road, Riverside, Cook County, northeastern Illinois; Monday, June 7, 2010, 12:12: Teemu08, CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TomekHouse.JPG

Light, Sally. 1989. House Histories: A Guide to Tracing the Genealogy of Your Home. Including Chapters on How to Operate a Homebased “House Histories” Business. Spencertown, NY, U.S.A.: Golden Hill Press.