Researching the History of Your House
If you have purchased a house that has had previous owners, your house has a history. During the past few years there has been a growing interest in finding historic information about the neighborhood, architecture and earlier owners of a home. This guide has been composed to help you get started in locating information that will help get to the earlier documentation of your house and immediate area. You just may find the search interesting and the results intriguing!
My house is old. That makes it historic, right?
Every house has a history, but that doesn’t mean that every old house can be considered "historic."
Typically, when we say that a house is "historic," we mean that an official agency has designated that building, its site, or the area where it is located, as being worthy of preservation. There are a number of preservation organizations that grant historic status on the national level, like the National Register of Historic Places and the National Trust for Historic Preservation; on the state-wide level, like the Maryland Historical Trust; and locally, like Baltimore’s Commission for Historical & Architectural Preservation. These groups help provide leadership and advocacy for the preservation community and work to identify, evaluate, preserve, and interpret historic properties and their roles in our country’s heritage.
A house needn’t be big and grand in order to be "historic," in fact it doesn’t have to be a house at all. For instance, a small wooden garage in Palo Alto, California is now a California Historic Landmark, and was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places. It was granted that status because it was there, in 1939, that William R. Hewlett and David Packard founded Hewlett-Packard, a company that would go on to be an international technology giant. Association with the lives of prominent people like Hewlett and Packard is one criterion often used to justify designating a property as historic. Other criteria used to determine whether a property or an area qualifies for historic status might include its age (usually at least 50 years) and authenticity, association with historic events, archaeological interest, distinguished architectural qualities, use of distinctive construction materials and methods, its style or aesthetic value.
Historic homes and districts can provide real benefits to our communities. The preservation and reuse of existing structures is an outstanding example of conservation, helping us to preserve our connections to the past while giving us more attractive places to live in the present. There could also be economic benefits to the community seen in the form of tourism dollars.
For individuals owning historic properties, in addition to the honor of being listed, benefits could come in the form of tax incentives, and, in the case of National Register listings, extra consideration when Federal projects affecting the property are planned. Owners of historic private property are generally free to manage and dispose of their properties as they wish, and are not obliged to open them to the public.
To see if your property or neighborhood has been granted historic status, try searching the National Register Information System database. The Maryland Historical Trust (MHT) also maintains a list of National Register properties in Maryland. Visit the MHT Web site and look under "Sites and Inventories/National Register" to see if your property is on the list. If you’re interested in seeing your property achieve historic status, you can start the process by contacting your State Historic Preservation Officer. In Baltimore City, you may want to contact the Commission for Historical & Architectural Preservation to see if you are living in a designated historic district or qualify for local tax incentives.
The Enoch Pratt Free Library has created Historic House Solutions: Extreme Makeover or Design on a Dime, a How-to Guide that provides book and Internet resources on architecture and restoration of historic structures.
Of course, not every house is historic or located in a historic neighborhood. Regardless of the status of your home, you should be able to utilize some basic resources to locate information about the structure.
Tax Assessments, Title Searches and Deeds
Tax assessments
Tax assessments are useful in establishing a chain of title from the original owners of a property to the current owner. Recent Maryland tax assessments are available for all of Maryland's twenty-three counties and the City of Baltimore online at the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation Real Property Data Search. Assessments provide information such as a legal description of the land and the building, referred to as the property "improvement", as well as records of remodeling. In addition, a record of the sellers and buyers is provided and in many cases the deed number and the date when the house was built.
Earlier tax assessments may be located in the County Circuit Courts or at the Maryland State Archives.
Title Searches and Deeds
Patents, titles and deeds are terms pertaining to important aspects of property ownership.
The term patent refers to the granting of ownership rights to property.
The term title refers to the actual right of property ownership.
A deed is a record of land ownership and transactions, proof that a piece of land is owned by a specific individual who has the title of this property. The information in a deed may vary, but at a minimum it will provide a name, location of the property, and period of ownership.
Land records and deeds may extend further back in time than any other record used in genealogical research, according to genealogist William Dollarhide, (Genealogy Bulletin, issue no. 25, Jan-Feb 1995). The "Domesday Book," which is essentially a property tax list, was gathered for William the Conqueror in the 11th Century.
In Maryland counties and the City of Baltimore, deed books and deeds are located in each county’s Circuit Court, usually in a land records division. Most often you begin by searching the buyer/seller index in the land records division, and copy the name, date, deed book and page number for every deed indexed.
Note that each deed will provide the residence for the buyer and the seller, as well as all owners of the property in case there are more than one.
Using the information provided by land records not only shows the property transaction between a buyer and a seller (called the grantee and grantor), but may also reveal the name of a man’s wife and heirs. In addition to deeds, the division of land records may include mortgages and deeds of trust; leases, releases of mortgages and deeds of trust, and land contracts.
Sometimes this can also be done by mail with the help of the County Register of Deed Records by asking whether the name can be found in a Buyer/Seller Index. The index will indicate the deed book and page number for a deed transcript, providing a citation that may be used to locate the original deed.
Deeds in Maryland can also be accessed online using MDLandRec.net, a digital image retrieval system for land records in Maryland. Once a password is created, the researcher can use deed numbers from tax assessments. Choose a county or Baltimore City on the MDLandRec.net site, and enter the deed information into the three boxes on that page. Using the deeds as they appear for the property, locate the previous deed’s liber (book or volume) and folio (page) numbers and enter these into the boxes in the upper right to search retrospectively for information. In the case of an older house, it may be necessary to find the deed at the Maryland State Archives.
For more detail on land records in the State of Maryland, try the Maryland State Archives Guide to Land Records, a comprehensive resource explaining various documents, terms and procedures of property transactions in Maryland.
Another good web resource that provides a clear, concise and detailed description of the steps involved in researching a house is Historic House Research in Maryland from the University of Maryland.
Using Maps
Why are maps valuable?
Since you will want to compile as much information as you can about your home and the surrounding area, you can look at a variety of types of maps and atlases. Maps are not only fun to view, but show information in a way that other documents do not and provide great leads to further exploration.
Street maps can help identify when your street was created. Don’t overlook searching for the ordinance or bill that created the street. It is not uncommon to find that your street was known by a different name at one time, or that some other structure would have been found on your property. The Maryland Department has many street maps for Baltimore and a limited number for Annapolis, Hagerstown, Cumberland, and Frederick.
Sanborn Fire Insurance maps have been drawn and revised by the Sanborn Company since 1867. The earliest for Maryland go back to the 1880s and have been created for most cities and towns in the state. While the originals are drawn to identify the material that a structure was built from construction type for insurance purposes, these highly detailed plates divulge a lot of information. For example, when the lots in question were subdivided, the date a structure appeared on the lot, which commercial, civic and religious buildings existed and their proximity to the lot. Sanborn maps were not updated on a regular basis so the available years vary with the city or town in question.
The Maryland Department holds Sanborn maps for the entire state of Maryland and online access is available through the Enoch Pratt Free Library databases. Using Sanborn maps may be a bit confusing at first. If you do not have access to the maps and would like a librarian to check your area, contact the Maryland Department.
Atlases may identify the creation of the lot in which the structure on your property was erected. There were a number of atlases published by some well-known companies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In most cases, these historic atlases, including Sanborn maps, show who owned the property at the time. The name of the landowner can be researched for biographical information and within county histories and may provide leads to the character of the property and/or the evolution of the community. The Maryland Department also has a collection of historical atlases and Sanborn Insurance maps.
Plats are legal land descriptions shown in map form. These maps show the division of land into streets, blocks and lots. In showing these, the actual measurements belonging to each parcel of land are identified. They can be very detailed and show changes to the lot over time. The Maryland State Archives provides free access to plats from Maryland. You will need to apply for access by emailing the Maryland State Archives to get a user name and password. Then you can login at Plats.net. Make sure to read the user's guide, which will explain how to acces the plat maps. To research plat maps, which indicate legal changes to the lot or may identify previous property owners, contact the courthouse in your county.
A limited number of real estate atlases are found in the Pratt Library’s Maryland Department collection. While not actual plats, these maps show the layout of streets and lots. Some contain zoning information or identify census tract boundaries. The Maryland Department has a collection of real estate atlases for Maryland counties.
Zoning maps, which are found in a variety of formats, can identify a number of characteristics regarding a structure, including historic districts. If the location of your home is within a designated state or national historic district, there may be further documentation about the structure, or neighborhood. Zoning maps can allow you to find whether an addition or design enhancement has been legally made. Other attributes of zoning maps include other public, or community, uses of the surrounding property
Aerial photographs may not be available for every city or town, but they are an excellent way to view the developed areas at a moment in time. If you are fortunate enough to find an aerial view of your home, consider getting a framed copy to document its history from the date of the image. The best sources for aerial photographs would be county planning departments or historic area agencies.
A type of map similar to aerial photographs are birds-eye views. These realistic sketches of a city or town as if drawn from a balloon were popular in the 19th century and depict the way the community looked at that time.
Additional Resources
The Maryland Department also includes a wealth of other resources for researching the history of a Maryland home, including:
Contact Us
There are many sources that can provide clues to the history of your house. In addition to the Maryland Department, the Fine Arts and Music Department has general resources related to researching the history of a house.
If you would like to talk to a librarian about researching the history of your house, email us through our Ask A Librarian service or contact us at:
Maryland Department
Enoch Pratt Free Library
Central Library, State Library Resource Center
400 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
(410) 396-5468
