Old homes are great.  They have character and charm that you just can't find in new homes.  Patty and I have spent the last 2 years renovating an old church into our home.  Recently, we started researching the property to learn more about its history.  We are finding that it can be a real challenge to research a home in our area ... especially if it was built in the early 1900s or before.  We've found a few great resources, though, and thought that we'd pass them along to others who may be researching an old home.

One of the first steps we recommend is contact your title company.  For a fee (I think we paid $25), our title company wa able to provide us with a sales history of our property.  The sales history is a collection of deeds, maps, and other relevant documents that indicate the various owners of a property, transfer dates, etc.  The information can be quite fun and interesting to read and will often give you some insight into the history of your home.

The next stop should be your local library.  In our case, we went to the Fort Vancouver Regional Library (http://www.fvrl.org/aboutus/branch_list.cfm).  We went to the main Vancouver branch and found years of old news articles on microfiche, old city directories (many with reverse address look up), Sanborn Maps, marriage records, burials records, and all sorts of other tools to help us learn more about our town, our neighborhood, our home, and the people who lived in our home before us.  Other local resources that we found helpful were the Clark County Genealogical Society (http://www.ccgs-wa.org/) at 717 Grand Blvd in Vancouver and the Clark County Historical Museum (http://www.cchmuseum.org/) at 1511 Main St in Vancouver.

There are also a lot of online tools that we have found helpful.  We often started our name, company and/or address searches at www.google.com.  From there, we were led to all sorts of tools and resources.  For properties in Clark County and/or other areas of Washington State, you may want to check out Clark County Geographic Information System (GIS) at http://gis.clark.wa.gov/gishome/, the Digital Archives at http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov, Washington History at http://secstate.wa.gov/history, and/or the Washington State Digital Collections at http://digitalwa.statelib.wa.gov/wscollections.htm.

In our case, we knew that our home had previously been a church.  The sales history that we got from our title company gave us additional detail, though.  We learned that our area was platted by Edson M Rowley in 1909.  He first sold our property to the Seventh Day Adventist Church in 1911.  The first pastor was a man by the name of Rev. Clarence A Purdum.  From 1923 - 1970, our property was owned by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints under the leadership of Rev. Marcus H Cook and, later, Rev. Paul E Fishel.

We have also learned that the name of our street was originally New York Avenue, that our area was once referred to as 'Vancouver Heights', that there was a railroad just blocks from our property that ran between Vancouver and the Battle Ground area, that there was a street car line just blocks from our home that ran between downtown Vancouver and Sifton (past a race track at Bagley Downs). and that our area was once owned and/or inhabited by some of early Vancouver's most prominent people/familes like Arthur W. Hidden, George T. McConnell, Louis Sohns (Sohus), Samuel W. Brown, Hon. C. H. Whitney and others.

We know that we have just scratched the surface and look forward to learning much more about our home.  And we're having a great time and meeting some great people in the process.  So if walls could talk, what stories would your home tell?

Patty & Scott Carroll - RE/MAX Equity Group, Vancouver WA