Local History House Research

When my spouse and I moved into our current home in December 2023, we were curious about when our house was originally built (I was originally told 1948), when an obvious addition was built (originally told 1968), and of course, who lived there over the years. However, having never done this type of research, I had no idea where to start! Luckily, in February 2024, I got a job at the Crawfordsville District Public Library (CDPL) in the Adult Services and Local History department.

Since the position requires training in local history, Dellie Craig (our amazing local historian) and I decided to use my house as part of my training. It was so interesting that I thought others in our community might be interested in learning about their own homes.

We started by looking at the City Directories for the year my house was built. These books are amazing tools for this type of research because you can search by address or name. It’s like a phone book on steroids! While CDPL has copies of almost all the City Directories, there are a few gaps. In my case, I searched by my address, and the first time it appeared in a book on the shelf was in the 1952 directory and listed the resident’s name. Then I moved to the part of the book that lists names and found the one listed for my address. It confirmed the address and even listed the resident’s occupation and employer.

Once I found my house listed in the 1952 directory, I then looked at the directory for each year up to when we bought it. As I went along, I made a list of the residents so I had names to search for in the main local history database. I even found pictures of some of the older prior residents. This database is free to use in the library or from home through our website.

Then I used the information in the database to find specifics on when and where previous residents died. Most of them passed in hospital, but one died in the house. Once I had the publication date and page number, I was able to locate the Journal Review obituaries using our microfilm collection. The obituaries provided a lot of additional information about the people who previously lived in my home.

At this point, I still had questions about my house, so I moved on to the Montgomery County website and looked under GIS Maps on the home page. I was able to search by address and found a treasure trove of information. According to the county, my house was built in 1945 and the addition was built in 1976.

It was incredibly interesting to learn about the history of my home. I hope to learn more in the future, but this was a great start! If this type of research interests you, please visit us on the 2nd floor of the library Monday through Thursday from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, Friday and Saturday from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, or Sunday from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Come and learn a little bit more about our local history with us!