The true age of my house

This post has been a long time in the making, and it's not one that I'm at all happy about.

The house was sold to me as being built in 1870. I didn't know as much then as I do now about houses so I didn't question it. Once I bought the house and started restoring it a lot of little things didn't add up.

The first thing I noticed in researching the deeds to the property was one from 1899 when Mattie Darnall sold the remainder of their land with the house to E. C. Boag. The description of the house was a "Seven room house". well, the original part of this house was eight rooms, not seven.

Then I began noticing lots of little things in the construction of the house that didn't add up. Most of the door hardware is early 1900's, not 1870's. I attributed that to the house being remodeled in the early 1900's.

The next thing I noticed were the nails used in the construction of the house. There are a lot of cut nails used but I was very surprised when I started finding wire nails in the framing of the house. I started researching nails. Wire nails were around as early as the 1850's but were not used all that much until a new and easier way of making them was devised in the 1880's. But they weren't widely used until the early 1900's. So it was possible that they built the house in 1870 with wire nails but highly doubtful.

One reason it took me so long to definitively answer the age question was that every time I would come up with a piece of evidence showing the house was not as old as I had thought, I found another piece to contradict that. One such thing was the doors in the house, most of them are hand made with hand saws (straight cut marks instead of circular). Another was the wood used in the house, a lot of the framing is very old. A lot of the sills are hand-hewn 8x12's. Also, all of the siding was attached to the house using old cut nails.

Another thing that troubled me was the artifacts I was finding in and under the house. Almost everything I found was from the early 1900's. I found lots of pieces of newspaper under the house but most of them were from the 30's and 40's. The earliest one was from 1919. I also found a lot of melted glass under the house.

A while back I found that the old Sanborn Fire Insurance maps for my area were online. When I looked up my lot I found a 1 story house instead of a 2 story. It also appeared to be closer to the road and a different shape and size.

1895

1909

1915

Now I know that the Sanborn maps are not always perfectly accurate (I have found a few errors in other houses) but that much off? The two "twin" houses to my left are drawn perfectly.

A few weeks ago I went back to the courthouse and pulled all the deeds I could find for my property. The period when it was owned by Mrs. Sarah Leila Oxford (1906-1939) is what interested me the most. I found two deeds that pretty much settled it.

This deed, dated Nov 24, 1914 shows a one story house

This deed, dated Oct 17, 1929 shows a two story house

There were a large number of second mortgage deeds in between these two.

Date	Paid	Amount	Lender
7-Sep-14	1-Sep-20	$800.00	Ida Mccormick
24-Nov-14		$64.45	Wheaton-Tyus Co, Material Men
4-Aug-16	8-Nov-17	$800.00	Blanton & Sons
8-Nov-17	4-Sep-20	$365.01	Griffin Banking Co.
1-Sep-20	1-May-22	$898.56	Savings Bank of Griffin
7-Jun-28	1-Aug-28	$508.16	Commercial Savings Bank
3-May-29	18-Sep-29	$1,020.00	Commercial & Savings Bank
17-Oct-29	21-Apr-36	$1,250.00	Griffin Building & Loan
10-Aug-34	20-Dec-34	$200.04	Southern Loan Co.
13-Jul-35	21-Apr-36	$242.00	Personal Loan Co.
21-Apr-36	19-Nov-42	$1,510.73	First Federal Savings and Loan
16-Dec-36	18-Mar-38	$106.75	The State Bank
18-Mar-38	29-Mar-39	$132.50	Commercial & Savings Bank

What I believe happened is that the original house burned down, insurance money was used to build this house, and the second mortgages were used to build the additions. Most of the mortgages were used, at least in part, to pay off older ones, but a few stand out to me. The 1920 mortgage stands out because the clawfoot tubs in the bathrooms are dated 1919.

The house appears to have been built using mainly salvaged wood. The framing, siding, doors, and upstairs mantels all appear to have been reused. The interior doors and upstairs mantels look to be 1830's - 1850's, this would tie in with the hand hewn framing under the house. Many beams also have mortise and peg notches cut in them.

So now I'm left with what to call the house, both 1870 house and Darnall house are wrong. I guess The Oxford house would be the most accurate. I'm thinking The Oxford-Boynton House. The Boynton being for Helen Boynton-Stroud and Miss Kitty Clyde Boynton. They lived in the house from 45 to 55, the Boyntons were a prominent family in Griffin. I believe their uncle was James Stoddard Boynton, he was a Colonel in the Confederate army, a Judge, the mayor of Griffin, President of the Georgia Senate and was even Governor of Georgia for a short time when the then current Governor died in office.

I still need to tie down the exact age of the house. I really need to find the relatives of Sarah Oxford to do this. The problem is there's not much out there. Her maiden name was McKneely, she married Luke Crawley in 1895. Her name was Crawley when she bought the house. She married George Oxford in 1909, he died in 1925. She married a C. H. Hungerford in 1935 but appears to have kept her last name of Oxford. Another thing that makes her hard to track is that sometimes she goes by Sarah and sometimes by Leila. Her names have also been misspelled as Sara and Lela.

If I can ever track her family down I can hopefully get a solid date on the house and maybe even pictures.