I once took a class at my local library that used the area’s land records and fire insurance maps to research your house. It was neat to see the timeline for the land around our 1911 house becoming more and more developed. I could also reverse-search census records and determine previous residents’ names and family sizes.
When I learned that nearly every family had lived in the house for about 20 years, I was somehow comforted about packing my things. It made me feel like I was taking my place in a long line of stewards and that it was time for another family to have it.
House research is a gratifying sidebar to genealogy.
My parent’s property in North Carolina is where I built my new house. It is in a patch of woods where my sister and I played Little House on the Prarie when we were young.
We all refer to Roaring Gap as our happy place. Mom and Dad had their honeymoon in the guest house in 1959 and then inherited the property from my father’s childless godparents less than ten years later, changing our lives forever.
August 15, 1959
Theirs is one of the oldest houses on the mountain, built in 1873, over fifty years before the hotel made a dam to create the lake. Family lore has it that rather than see our tiny guest house flooded and left to rot at the bottom of the lake, Dad’s godparents, Uncle Charles, and Aunt Edna, rescued it by using logs to roll it onto our property.
Once I had the go-ahead to build in North Carolina, I had some work to figure out how to position my driveway without causing too much disruption. One of my brothers-in-law said, “You’re going to have to crack more than a few eggs to make THAT omelet.” After a few trips to the land record office and interpretation of a pile of survey records, I found that I could use a smidge of an easement, which made all the difference.
Somewhere in the process, I had seen and jotted down the name John Ross and added it to my running note of things “to look up.”
John Ross, it turns out, is the man who built the original house and owned many acres of the surrounding area in the late-1800s. I started a new tree in ancestry with him at the center, and before I knew it, he was taking shape as a farmer, husband, and father.
I routinely use newspapers.com to look for mentions of the people I am researching.
There was a time when local newspapers were similar to FaceBook. “So and so went visiting.” “Such and such is hosting a garden party.” I entered “John Ross” and discovered he had grown a giant cabbage in 1893.
I love finding this information; no vital record will include cabbage.
Our property has a lovely little natural spring. When I was a kid, we had a dented tin ladle hanging on the tree next to it, and I remember the sensation of the cold water spreading through my chest as I gulped. Ours and many others feed the lake.
The next mention of the Ross family I found was from the Charlotte Daily Observer on Sunday, October 11, 1908, and it knocked me over.
“I spent the night with John Ross on top of the Blue Ridge when we went to Roaring Gap two weeks ago. I wish I were as well fixed as Mr. Ross, who has fifty or sixty acres of land which will bring fine corn, grass, apples, and buckwheat; a snug little home, neat and as clean as a new ship; a bold spring of the purest water, a wife, two children, a ‘possum dog. A house cat, plenty of nice feather beds, and a pantry full of good things to eat.
What more could a man want when he lives In such a healthy section of the country? I hope that someday, perhaps when I grow old, I will be able to retire to Roaring Gap and become a neighbor of John Ross.”
Even though I KNEW that John Ross had built and occupied our house, it wasn’t until I read about the “bold spring of the purest water” that I BELIEVED it.
This Old House has an excellent article on how to get started.
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