![\"Holcombe\"](\"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Holcombe.jpg\")
<\/a>Chances are you will be greatly entertained by the visit, and, if you\u201a\u00c4\u00f4re lucky, they might have old photographs they can share with you.<\/p>\n
\u00ac\u2020Step Two. Architecture and Location<\/h3>\nPhotographs<\/h4>\n
An early photograph of your house is a priceless gift. You will quickly see how different houses looked in the 19th\u00ac\u2020or early 20th\u00ac\u2020century from how they look now\u201a\u00c4\u00eeeven if previous owners made no significant changes to the structure. This is why it is sometimes hard to estimate the age of a house by its exterior. An old photograph could give you some very important clues.<\/p>\n
Architecture<\/h4>\n
Try to educate yourself on architectural styles, and the components of older houses. Learn the difference between post and beam and balloon-frame construction. Look for original materials like floor-boards and nails, especially nails. Study the woodwork if it\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s original to the house.<\/p>\n One important thing to keep in mind is that we live in what might be considered a backwater. New architectural styles were first used in more developed areas, closer to New York and Philadelphia, while Hunterdon carpenters and builders preferred to stick to the older styles, long after they went out of fashion.<\/p>\n There are many good books on the subject. My favorites are by Eric Sloane, like Our Vanishing Landscape <\/i>and A Reverence for Wood<\/i>. These are not exhaustive professional studies of colonial architecture, but they are fun to read, and Sloane\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s drawings are wonderful.<\/p>\n When it gets right down to it, if there is any question about the age of your house there are two ways to get good answers, and they both cost money. First\u201a\u00c4\u00eeget a bone fide architectural historian to visit your house and give you a report, verbal or written. You will learn a lot about your house, but will probably not get an exact date of its construction. For that you need to have a dendrochronology test done. This involves boring into a beam, right through its core, and studying the sample to count the rings in the wood. It is surprisingly accurate, but it is also expensive and takes a long time to do. However, if you think you have a real historical gem of a house, I strongly recommend that you do it. There is just one caution–the date of the beam will be the date that the tree was harvested. There are many cases in which a house was built using materials from an earlier house. Caution is advised, as always.<\/p>\n With a sense of the time-frame of your house, your work in the Search Room will be more accurate and focused. You\u201a\u00c4\u00f4ll need this because you are not going to find a record on file of when your house was constructed. Certificates of Occupancy, builder\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s permits, approved site plans and all the other bureaucratic records that are required today did not exist until the mid 20th\u00ac\u2020century. So we have to find another way.<\/p>\n Along with a sense of your house\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s architecture, you need the information that old maps can provide, along with a good map of your property\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s location.\u00ac\u2020These are the most important maps to find:<\/p>\n 1) \u00ac\u2020Your Tax Map<\/strong><\/p>\n Get the map for your block and lot and for surrounding blocks. Visit the County Clerk\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s office to get the size that is printed on 11 by 17\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 paper; it is the most useful, and since they have a complete collection for the entire county, you can easily get maps for surrounding areas. (Getting them copied onto 11×17 paper will take some assistance from the clerks.)<\/p>\n One caveat\u201a\u00c4\u00eethese maps are current, which means they show all the subdivisions. But you are more interested in what your area looked like before all the subdividing was done. Ask your municipal clerk if there are any older tax maps on file. If not, you can entertain yourselves by whiting out subdivision lines. Just be careful not to white out older lot lines.<\/p>\n 2) \u00ac\u2020Aerial Photographs<\/strong><\/p>\n Both wide focus and close in.<\/p>\n These are invaluable for displaying hedgerows, which are often old lot lines that may have disappeared from the tax map. They can also give you hints of old roads. Fortunately, you can get these easily with Google Maps. Be sure to print out copies.<\/p>\n Not only can you get your aerial photo from Google Earth, you can go to a new website called History Mapping<\/a>\u00ac\u2020(www.historymapping.org) and find tax maps overlaid with aerials as well as the major historical maps for Hunterdon County. Definitely check this out.<\/p>\n 3) \u00ac\u2020The Beers Atlas of 1873<\/strong><\/p>\n This is one of three major 19th\u00ac\u2020century maps to show property owners or residents in Hunterdon County. This one comes in several formats, but the most useful is in book form, with a page for each municipality. You can find the Atlas at the Historical Society or the County Library. Get a good photocopy or take a photograph. At this time, the Historical Society has only two copies for sale.\u00ac\u2020If \u00ac\u2020you decide you want to purchase one and they\u201a\u00c4\u00f4ve sold out, be sure to let the executive director Linda Hahola know that you\u201a\u00c4\u00f4d like the trustees to order new copies for sale, and be sure to give her your contact information. Alternatively, you can find the Atlas online through the Hunterdon County Library’s website<\/a> (high resolution tif images).<\/p>\n 4) \u00ac\u2020Philadelphia and Environs, 1860<\/strong><\/p>\n Unfortunately, as far as I know, this map has not been reproduced for purchase. There are several original copies to be found; one is at the County Library and another at the Historical Society. Others are owned by private collectors. Because they are originals, they have darkened with age and can be hard to read. But they\u201a\u00c4\u00f4re still worth seeking out. You can try to capture a photo\u201a\u00c4\u00eegood lighting is essential.<\/p>\n 5) \u00ac\u2020The Cornell Map of 1851<\/strong><\/p>\n This is the first of the historic maps that indicates property owners by name. There are earlier maps of Hunterdon County, but this is the first with farmhouses located. You can get a copy of this map from the Hunterdon County Historical Society. You can also find it online from the “American Memory” page of the\u00ac\u2020Library of Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n 6) \u00ac\u2020Sanborn Insurance Maps<\/strong><\/p>\n The Cornell, Philadelphia and Beers maps don\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t help much if your house is in a town like Clinton. Especially with the 1851 map, the houses are too close together to be depicted. The Sanborn Insurance Maps come to the rescue, at least for the late 19th\u00ac\u2020century. They show small town lot lines and structures in surprising detail, along with names of owners. They were published at different times\u201a\u00c4\u00eeClinton 1886-1939; Flemington 1885-1921; Lambertville 1885-1923, etc. They are available at the County Historical Society. Like the Beers Atlas, you can find images of the Sanborn Maps online<\/a>, made available by the Princeton Library.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n 7) \u00ac\u2020And finally, the Hammond Maps<\/strong><\/p>\n For the earliest landowners (but not necessarily residents), get a copy of the Hammond map for your area. These maps were drawn by D. Stanton Hammond in 1963, based on the earliest surveys and land purchases on file at the State Archives.2<\/a><\/sup>\u00ac\u2020The maps are invaluable for getting back to the first owner of your property. They don\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t have the answers for everyone, especially for north Hunterdon, where land transactions were far less well-documented. But anyone researching their house must take a look at them.\u00ac\u2020I frequently make use of them on my website.3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n The maps are available at the County Library and the Historical Society. You can purchase your own set of maps\u00ac\u2020from the Genealogical Society of N.J.\u00ac\u2020<\/a><\/p>\n Now you know something about your property\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s 20th\u00ac\u2020century owners, you know who was in residence in 1851, 1860 and 1873, and you have a good idea of your property\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s lot lines and configuration. Finally, you\u201a\u00c4\u00f4re ready for the search room.<\/p>\n Think of a chain with many links. Each link is a transaction in which the ownership of your property changed. You hold the last link. Your challenge is to find all the links all the way back to the first one in the chain.<\/p>\n To do this, you need to learn how to read a deed, how to recognize what is essential information versus boilerplate. But also, you need to know what boilerplate can be ignored and what is important. If you are really interested, study real estate law\u201a\u00c4\u00eeit can be an eye opener. Some of the ancient phrases found in deeds are down-right poetic, like \u201a\u00c4\u00fato have and to hold. . . \u201a\u00c4\u00f9 Makes you realize that for hundreds of years, marriage ceremonies were more about property than romance. In fact, land ownership law still has vestiges of the feudal system from which it emerged.<\/p>\n You will soon discover that for deeds recorded before around 1920, land was measured not in feet and inches but in chains and links. Time to learn about a Gunter\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s Chain, which was 66 feet long and had 100 links, each link being 7.92 inches. This was the gold-standard for measuring land ever since 1620 when it was introduced by Edmund Gunter in England.4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Get a copy of Phyllis D\u201a\u00c4\u00f4Autrechy’s book House Plans<\/i> for good advice on what is important in a deed and what you can ignore. As it turns out, not that much. As Phyllis wrote:\u00ac\u2020 \u201a\u00c4\u00faDon\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t be in a hurry to dash to the next deed. A hurried job will make a\u00ac\u2020 . .\u00ac\u2020 poor research project. There aren\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t any short cuts.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 This is excellent advice\u201a\u00c4\u00eeand very difficult advice to take. You\u201a\u00c4\u00f4ll probably learn the hard way, and have to go back and start over. I\u201a\u00c4\u00f4ve done it myself.\u00ac\u2020It would take an entire post to describe how to read a deed. Instead, I refer to\u00ac\u2020House Plans<\/em> for a good introductory course.5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n You will never be completely certain that you have the right deeds in your chain of title unless you plot out the deeds and locate the property on the tax map. If you don\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t plot your deeds you could end up on a wild goose chase, researching a completely different property.<\/p>\n To plot a deed, that is, to draw out the lines described in the metes and bounds, you will need a protractor, a sharp pencil, some graph paper and a nice metal ruler. You will also need a scale to translate the chains and links into a size suitable for 8-1\/2\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 by 11\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 paper. I have found that a very useful scale for matching chains and links to the usual tax map on 11\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 by 17\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 paper is 0.2 cm = one chain, give or take. There are software programs that do this work for you. Last time I checked, the good ones were pretty expensive, and the affordable ones were pretty inaccurate. That may have changed. If you find a good one, it will make your work a lot easier.<\/p>\n<\/a>Maps<\/h4>\n
<\/a>Step Three: The Chain of Title<\/h3>\n
<\/a>Abstract Your Deeds<\/h4>\n
Plot Your Deeds<\/span><\/h4>\n