Built in 1830 ? (was Dating 18th/19th century Details)

[gregV]

COOK STOVES

Here are some newspaper ads in Mass. for cook stoves. Seems they were available as early as 1815 maybe I would "guess" that the Stanley's Patent Rotary Cooking Stove, circa 1835, may have been the stove of choice when your house was built and in turn built with the intention of this stove being used. .

[jharkin]

I don't have a scan handy, but my wife got ahold of a copy of an 1830 something map of our town. There is a house marked at the location where my house sits. So we assume its at least that old.

NO, no markings anywhere on the framing. Ive searched for the roman numerals but none I can see on anything that's exposed. Someday when I find an excuse and the funds to drop the ceiling on the second floor and address the insulation issues I will take a look at the top of the rafters looking for the markings and the ridge pole or lack thereof...

[gregV]

I don't have a scan handy, but my wife got ahold of a copy of an 1830 something map of our town. There is a house marked at the location where my house sits. So we assume its at least that old.

NO, no markings anywhere on the framing. Ive searched for the roman numerals but none I can see on anything that's exposed. Someday when I find an excuse and the funds to drop the ceiling on the second floor and address the insulation issues I will take a look at the top of the rafters looking for the markings and the ridge pole or lack thereof...

The markings you are looking for will be on the sawn boards, not the hewed post or beams. Maybe on sawn joist or studs, but best place to find will be on the boards.
Cool about that map. You can always just take a picture of it and post it. Is there a name on the house on that map?
Hope all is well Jeremy.

[jharkin]

OK... Some more reading. I'm starting to think c. 1830.

We have a map that is 1835 I think and shows the house, so I'm fairly sure its at least that old.

Nails:
Ive found some interesting reading...
http://korns.org/Michael_Korns_aerial/e ... nails.html
and particularly this PDF from PA http://korns.org/TDoOH/TDoOH.pdf

That seem to indicate cut nails first came into being around 1790 in the states, and after 1797 were dominant as two large nail factories outside Philadelphia started up that year. It states that cut nails with stamped heads show up c. 1825 - and most of the nails I find are of that style.

Hinges:
According to the above and a few other books Ive read cast iron butt hinges come into universal use very suddenly in 1783. That is what I have.

Interior doors:
Looking at the notes on door construction in the above PDF and another doc specifically on doors here http://preserveala.org/pdfs/ESSAYS/DOOR ... RDWARE.pdf

The doors I have are thin (1 1/8) and the moldings around the panels are part of the rails, which seems to date them in this period. They don't show signs of hand planing, so they could have been refinished many times or maybe are early machine made doors (which supposedly were introduced first around Boston/NY c1800 and became universal after 1835).

The doors also have the holes where original Norfolk or Suffolk style latches were. Probably before 1840.


Lath:
Where we still have plaster there is sawn lath. So that cant be earlier than 1825.

Trim:
You pointed out the Greek columns on the fireplace before. There area lot of 1830-1850 Greek revival homes in the area so I suspect the town had a building boom at that time.


So all in all its looking like either the house was built closer to 1830 or at that time somebody gutted and renovated it.

Jeremy

[Ed Ventura]

Good info Jeremy

Your hard work will surelly help me date my new home

ED

[gregV]

I can't seem to get the first PDF to open.
The second PDF on doors sounds like a lot of generlization, and as far as I am concerned is bad info in regards to "new england" homes. Not much in there that I would agree with.

I highly doubt that the house was remolded either. "ALL" evidence is pionting to your conclusion of circa 1830s.

[jharkin]

I now have a theory!!!

I think the house was built by Capt. Abner Johnson, Jr (MA militia) between 1825 and 1830.

-----------
So here goes.

We have a map dated 1831 that shows the house, with the name "A. Johnson Jr."
All the nails I have found are machine headed cut nails that cant be earlier than 1825.
So I figure the house had to be built between those dates and A. Johnson is likely the first owner.

Now looking through the old Massachusetts vital records to find an "A" Johnson Jr, I found a string of 3 Abner Johnson's. Abner the first born 1737 was a farmer and had 6 kids. Abner Jr was born in 1776, got married to Polly stone in 1804, had a son Abner III in 1812, was widowed in 1819 and then remarried the same year to Mary Fiske. (The Fiskes were an influential family in town, the street next to us is Fiske St and most of the Houses on that street have Fiske names on the 1831 map).

Ok... back to Abner Jr. I found here a reference to Captains Abner Johnson and Samuel Bullard at an 1824 town meeting. DIgging around for officers named Abner Johnson I found a reference to Ensign Abner Johnson & Ensign Samuel Bullard Jr from Holliston serving in the 4th Reg. MA Militia at the defense of Boston in 1814. Seeing Johnson and Bullard both as ensigns and then later both listed as Captains makes me think it must be the same Abner Johnson. Incidentally the Bullards are another well known family in town like the Fiske's.



It will be interesting to go through the deeds and see if this matches up but its the best idea so far.

-Jeremy

[jharkin]

UPDATE

We took a trip to the registry of deeds in Cambridge. Very interesting time. Basically you start with your deed (ours was in book 52,882) and just start working backwards. Before we went we had done a lot of online research - in addition to the map and genealogy research we did above that gave us two potential owners - A. Johnson Jr in 1831 and P. Fitts in 1870 - I went through the online records of the registry and found the owners back to 1945 or so (book 6,xxx ).

I'm not kidding they really do have 60 odd thousand books. In racks. one by one.

Anyway, we get there and since our starting point was 1945 we got sent right to the basement where the "old books" are. Surprisingly were were able to quite quickly get into the 1800s. The house was owned by 3 sisters in the 30's who inherited it from there father Patcrick Fitspatrick, and the deed stated he was also known as "P. Fitts" !! and referred to a will and an old mortgage. That gets us to an 1858 mortgage from Edward Blood.



Then the trail ends. At that point the deeds no longer refer to the prior seller so we have to go back and forth from the basement up to the 4th floor to look up names in the grantor/grantee index books. We were having a hard time finding whomever sold it to Blood so we skipped ahead and looked up Abner Johnson. There are LOTS of sales involving Johnson, all for large tracts of farmland - 46 acres here, 28 acres, 5 acres, and one for 3 tracts totaling 65 acres that were granted to the seller in a court judgement from someone else, that one said to go read the "sheriffs deed" for a description. I think that all these are Abner Sr. buying farmland - so one guess is that Abner Jr. just built the house on part of his fathers farmland than it was inherited or sold at his death. Hard to say as all these pots just state some land "and all the building thereupon"


What is fun is that using the 1831 map I can find the plots because they all refer to the road the meetinghouse is on and measurements from neighbors houses and I can find those names labelled on the map. Downside is so far none of the plots listed is in the area of my house- but there is that vague 65 acre plot, I haven't been able to locate it.

In the fall we are thinking of going to the town historical society library to look up more old maps and then take another try at the deeds.

BTW, Starting with our deed in book 52,882 we got all the way back to a deed for Abner Sr. in book 161 ! ( Book one starts at 1648).

[gregV]

Very cool J! Glad you are finding the time to get to this. I know about these dead ends, but the answer always lies somewhere. Take some time to check out the CT historical society archives also as they have a lot of stuff.
Keep us posted. I'm sure you will find some good clues.

[jharkin]

So I ran into another head-scratcher...

I was up in the attic space clearing junk out so the insulation crew can get in there and I found a piece of old door casing. The casing matches the moulding profile in my parlor that Greg believed was original to the house. I remember it was similar in style to the mouldings in his house, but I think the beading looks different.

Here is the odd part. This piece of casing is OAK. And pretty obviously machine made - its too perfectly smooth and straight. The beaded edge is actually quite narrow (maybe 3/16) and is only beaded on the face of the board. OTOH, the baseboards in a couple rooms and the bargeboard and fascia boards on the outside of the house have large, almost 1/2" beads that are rounded on both faces and look hand planed.

So now I have to wonder, was that parlor renovated at some point, maybe closed to 1900? Is that moulding actually from a later period or maybe someone had some old moulding duplicated in a renovation?


[Sorry for the bad camera photo. Will update it later with a better shot]

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