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.

FINALLY! An old picture of the house!

Work has been progressing very slowly here. A lot of other things have been going on and it's hard to get back into that work mode in the little bit of free time I've had.

I've been working in the upstairs guest bathroom, check here if you don't remember how it looked when I left it last June. It doesn't look much different now except that I cleaned up all the plaster and I've removed almost all the lathe off the walls. The next step is going to be to remove the ceiling joists and rebuild them a foot higher like I did in the Master Bathroom.

With that out of the way, the only real news I've got is that I FINALLY got an old picture of the house!! It only took a year and a half of constant searching. One of the relatives that came to visit last week mailed me a picture of the house.

The picture appears to be from the 40's or early 50's. It says Aunt Helen's house on the back so it would have to be sometime between 1945-1955. What surprised me the most was that the house was apartments even back then. In the picture you can see the second floor deck and just barely make out the stairs on the left side of the porch. I believe at this point it was only two apartments, Helen and Kitty-Clyde lived downstairs and rented out the upstairs.



I took a picture of the house now in the exact same spot as the old picture:

Another thing I was surprised to see is that you cant see the huge oaks in the backyard above the roof of the house. I guess they've grown a lot in the last 60 years. The tree in front of the house is long gone, I believe it was an Elm. The large branch in the upper right of th picture was from the huge old Pecan tree next to the house, the tree is still there but the branch was removed at some point because it was too close to the house.

I was happy to see that I came pretty close on the porch railings. My railings are a little higher than the originals but otherwise look very similar. I will probably lower them later on to match the originals.

I'm also going to remove the second floor porch soon. For now I will remove the roof of the porch and cut the 4x4 columns off at the top of the railings. This should make it look very close to the old picture. Eventually I'm going to remove the it entirely and rebuild a much smaller deck in between the two upper windows. It will be just wide enough for a rocking chair on either side of the door. I'll also make it less deep, that way I can restore the original pitch of the porch roof without it looking like it was hacked into place like it does now. I may add some type of columns and small hip roof to it eventually.

The one that got away

I recently found a house on the Georgia Trust website for an endangered historic house in Macon, the house is known as the Napier House. It had to be moved or it was going to be torn down. The house is a beautiful Antebellum Greek Revival style home built in 1842. This style is my dream home. I WILL own one one day.

Anyways, the house was being sold for $1! Unfortunately I was too late. A town just south of Atlanta has already bought the property and is in the process of moving it the 100 miles from Macon to Atlanta. You can watch a video of the house being cut in half in preperation to be moved here.

Aftermath pictures from Monday's devestation

Yet another sad day for historic homes

We were sitting on our front porch yesterday evening when I noticed some smoke in the distance. It appeared to be coming from the north side of downtown. We hurriedly hopped in the car and drove there. Afer a few seconds of driving my heart dropped into my stomach. I knew what was on fire, it was the old funeral home on Hill st.

Picture taken 2 months ago

I'm not too sure about the history of the house. Some say it was built right at the turn of the 20th century, others say it's antebellum. Either way it was a beautiful old house. Just 2 months ago I decided to go around town and take pictures of the historical homes in Griffin. I took the above photo and as I was walking around it the funeral director came to the door, I explained how much I loved old houses and he let me in for a tour.

Foyer

Parlor

Parlor2

That was how it looked 2 months ago, the pictures below are from last night:

Previous owner's relatives visit

We haven't gotten much done on the house for a number of reasons. One of them being the new TV we got:




It's a 47" Westinghouse with full 1080P HD. The picture is incredible. It's $700 or $800 cheaper than anything else in it's class. I got it for $1299 from Best Buy. I fully recommend it to anyone in the market for a flat panel LCD.

We had a visit from the relatives of the former owner of the house, Hazel. I've mentioned her in the blog before, she lived to be almost 105 and owned the house since 1955 when she inherited it from her 2 aunts, Helen and Kitty-Clyde. They inherited the house in 1945.

The relatives brought some old photos of them over for us. I gave them a tour of the house and showed them all of the progress we've made, they seemed impressed with the work done so far. Here are a few pictures they brought:

Hazel in front of the house

Helen

Kitty-Clyde

Helen with her husband

They also brought some photos of the front porch after a car hit it back in 2001. A man that was a convicted felon got into a fight then shot at someone that tried to break it up. He then car-jacked a vehicle and didnt get 2 blocks away before losing control and crashing into the front of the house. I've found some evidence of this a few months ago when I was planting new bushes in front of the porch. I dug up what appears to be a front fender reflector and some safety glass that probably came from the drivers window.



In anticipation of their visit we rearranged and straightened up many of the rooms in the house. We completely rearranged the Parlor:



The Buggy is a recent find that we got free off Freecycle.





I'm hoping to get back to work on the house soon.

Paint

We spent the entire weekend painting. On Saturday we painted the shutters and the front porch railing.




We're thinking about possibly leaving the house white when we repaint instead of the pale olive we were originally thinking of. I think white will look a lot better with the upcoming redo of the front porch I mentioned in a previous post.

I also painted the wicker furniture on Saturday, the loveseat and table were unpainted but were looking very washed out, the chair was a hideous blue (we found it at a thrift store for $3):


Sunday was spent painting inside, first we painted all the trim in the Foyer and the back hall, then I painted the foyer:



I still need to finish installing the picture rail and figure out what I'm going to do with the entryway to the Study (on the right in the picture), the entire study is stained a dark walnut so making the transition from antique white paint to stain is difficult. I'm thinking of just staining the entire Study entryway.

The door in the picture leads to the back hall and will most likely be replaced with a salvaged french door. Eventually I will remove the door, widen the opening and add some columns to create a wide open passageway from the foyer to the back hall. I dont have the front door pictured because I still need to strip it entirely and refinish it.

We still have to paint the walls of the back hall. We will hopefully finish that today so I can move back upstairs to the master bathroom and finish it off.