October 13, 2009 • 26 mins
Ever wondered about the history of your house? In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck give listeners some pointers on determining the history of a house.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Chuck, Charles W. Bryant.
(00:20):
Happy leaf ericson Day, Happy leaf ericson Day? And that
is today is leaf ericson Day. And if you remember, Josh,
in our recent podcast on the first Americans May, we
had a little joke. Do you want to hear it?
Let's go back. Okay, I'm gonna go back music. Columbus
was beaten by a good five years by the Norse
(00:43):
who found who were in Newfoundland. That's not what we
were taught in history. And definitely there's no Norse day. No, No,
that'd be awesome. No leaf ericson Day. I don't think
there is not in the US. So there you have it,
and there is a leaf eric today and we both
have a little egg on our faces because we didn't
know that, and it is today, and it's very ironic. Yeah,
(01:06):
But people that wrote in said, I'm assuming it was
a joke that you were I know, that's how we
get away with or I'm going to write the mall
back and say you got it, got the joke. Yeah,
there was actually one guy, if you love delicious Irony,
who said he was making his leaf ericson day Viking
hat while he was listening to that podcast. Yea, where
the Clothes the first American? So yeah, as you said,
(01:28):
happy leaf ericcs and day to utes. So now for
your intro, which I'm sure you had planned before I
eviscerated you know you pretty much you eviscerated me. Really,
maybe it's okay? Well, Chuck, how old your house? Man?
My house was built in nineteen thirty two, I think
thirty two. Very nice old house. Yeah, the one I
(01:49):
live in from nineteen twenty. I believe you always got
to show me up. I know. I'm sorry, buddy, Okay,
it wasn't intentional, you own I rant. How about that?
All right? Well that's the ultimate show up exact. Thank
you for that, Chuck Um. And I've often wondered, like,
what has gone on with this house? There's this mysterious
um tarp that goes across the entire property. A tarp
(02:13):
like a plastic tarp. It's not plastic, it's woven. It
looks like you know what they use for silt fence.
It's just like that, except it's not standing up, and
it's clearly it was purposefully laid down. And my house
is on a hill, so I've often wondered like, did
they build this over an old dump? But did they
even have dumps like that? In this is under your
(02:33):
found the foundation of your house. It doesn't go into
the foundation, but it goes all throughout the yard. And
like I said, it's on a hill, so it could
be just to prevent erosion or something like I'm too
lazy to ask the landlord what the deal is because
they won't have erosion in n No, they didn't. That
was that started in the great Erosion Fire of Yeah. Um,
(02:55):
someone will believe that, probably Happy leaf erricks in day
Chuck YouTube. But my point is is I have no
idea what's going on with my house or what went
in went on in my house. I know it got
a roof like a couple of months ago, and that's
all I know about the house. So the history of
your home is I got a roof a couple of
months ago, exactly as far as I can tell. But
I know some really interesting stuff has gone on there.
(03:17):
Something can't stand for what almost ninety years um and
not have something interesting happening. Agreeing it, you would, you would, hope, right.
And I imagine the same is true for your house,
like I'm sure there's been squatting that had happened there before. Um,
And I know somebody who could go talk to about this,
(03:37):
and that somebody is your wife. Yes, she wrote this article.
I apologize for that intro. That's all right. Emily wrote
this article. And she's a freelance writer for how Stuff Works,
proving it's who you know, Josh agreed in order to
get jobs to some extent, Yes, especially if who you
know is hands down the finest writer at how stuff
(03:59):
Works dot and also has the finest hair. She knows
Robert Lamb. So, Chuck, let's talk about this. Why did
I just mention your wife, baket Chuck, I'm trying to
keep it on you. I thought we just said because
she wrote this article. Okay, I wasn't listening how to
find the history of your house on house to porks
dot com? Would you come up with? Well? Should I
(04:20):
just get Emily in here? Yeah? We probably should actually
teach you how to make soap and how to find
the history of your house all at once. Uh. Well,
you know, there are certain steps you can take, and
we're going to go through those right now, starting with
talk to your neighbors. This new neighborhood, the neighbors, I
don't know anybody. I don't talk to anybody, you mean,
I just moved in a couple of months ago. But
(04:41):
a classic neighborhood though that you live in it is
very much so. And I assume that there the neighborhood
would be much more community oriented. Everybody's kind of doing
their own thing, you know, everybody like kind of says
hi when you're passing by. But it's also a thoroughfare
um for people to get from one place another, So
I think that kind of lends this trans the nature
to it to get people speeding through your neighborhood right exactly,
(05:03):
and everybody's a stranger because of that. Um At the
last neighborhood was it was off of a major thoroughfare
and it was kind of isolated and everybody knew each other.
It was. It was really cool. It reminds me of
a neighborhood that you'd live in as a kid um
because you'd go out and play except playing involved like
heavy drinking that kind of thing. But like, you had
(05:24):
friends in the neighborhood, right, it was cool like that. Um.
But there were some neighbors that had lived there since
the seventies that I knew of, um and had spoken to.
They weren't old timers, but they were I guess they
had grown up there a little bit. They were like, yeah,
this place used to be a hotbed for meth. There's
like a I found out that there had been a
(05:44):
thriving meth lab just a couple of doors down from
my house, in my old house. Yeah, the one in
East Atlanta. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So you can learn some
interesting stuff about your neighborhood just by talking to your
neighbors exactly. So that's step one. Yeah, that's the easiest
way to kind of get you get the ball rolling. Right.
Let's say your neighbors, Um, if you try to go
(06:04):
up to their house and and even if you're greasing
their palms with some cookies, they're they're like, get off
my property. Where do you go from there? Chuck? Well,
if you want to start your investigation in earnest with records,
you should go find the records, which is at the
County Recorder's Office. And Emily makes a good point. She's
she says that although there's a lot of people who
are into digging up the history of their home, I
(06:26):
gat the impression this is a lot like genealogy to
some people, UM, that there's not that many resources for
old timey information online. Now you can't find, um, a
lot of these court records. You know, they're housed on
paper in you know, the depths of city hall usually,
and no one has said, hey, maybe we should take
(06:46):
the time to scan these and put them online. Right,
So what are we going to find at the County
Recorder's office. Well, what you want to find is the
deed history of your house. Okay, you're going to find
a guy in birkenstocks stocks like playing a recorder. You'll
probably find that. Sure, you might smell some incense. And
you want to get the deeds and trace back the
deeds to the original owner. If that's what your ultimate
(07:07):
goal is, to find out who originally built our own
your home. You're also going to find on file. Um,
and what you would take I guess is your plot
number or your address, which it can change, which is
why it's a good idea. To know your plot number.
That doesn't change, right, I would say, Actually, if you
have a house that's sent years old, chances are your
address did change over the years, especially if they doled
(07:30):
it out kind of haphazardly out the h the when
somebody builds a new house or something like that. Nobody
likes to be you know, seven thirty five and a half.
I was a quarter in the l A. My apartment was. Yeah,
it was seven something in a quarter. Because I was
(07:52):
in a four plex apartment building. I thought below half
they just started assigning letters. Do this is l A
because I think they have eights and sixteen people, just
like Crampton and Linen closets. Right. Another thing you can
look for, Josh, is have you ever heard of a
Sandborn map? I hadn't until I read this, and I
went and did a little research on Sandborn, and god,
(08:15):
they were interesting. The Sandborn map company was out of Michigan,
I believe, and they serviced and not in any kind
of dirty way. The fire insurance industry. Apparently insurance maps
were big as a whole back then. Yeah, if you were,
you know, located in Delaware, if your insurance company was
(08:35):
located in Delaware, and you had somebody in Taos, New
Mexico who wanted fire insurance from you. Um, what are
you gonna do? Send some guy out to look at
every single one? Now, your contract with the Sandborn Map
Company to make maps of twelve thousand cities and towns
around the United States and from eighteen sixty seven and
(08:57):
nineteen seventies and drawn aerial maps. And these things were detailed, man,
I mean like they they look like um land use
maps of today. Um Like there's not a little tiles
drawn in or bricks or anything like that, but I
mean like they're detailed, Like here's the closest fire hydrant.
Here's how many sprinklers this house has. Here's where the
(09:18):
windows are. Here's what the building nearby is used for.
I was looking at one. I can't remember what town
it was, but there was like the foundry or the
old foundry, and it said like vacant. And then there's
the other foundry nearby, and here's these houses. Is the
drawing of a city, And they did it all over
the place. And again they did it too for the
fire insurance industry. But these towns also got copies of
(09:40):
these maps, and a lot of them have them on
file because it was for the fire insurance. Was why
you get detailed like where the windows and doors were.
And I think it also says what materials your house
was made up. Right. They also did them in Mexico
and Canada. They also did um maps on sugar refinery
(10:00):
in places like Cuba and whiskey distilleries throughout the country. Um,
because those things tend to explode. And uh yeah, they
the Sandborn company basically made it so that you can
find what your house looked like any any time during
this period or where what else is around. It's really
cool because they also included street names and addresses. So
(10:21):
if you're if your city has a Sandborn map, you
are in luck. Yes, agreed. Um. The other thing you
can do is well, if you if you are able
to trace the deed back to the original owner, you
can go to the internet. Then if you've got a name,
it's always worth a try. Oh, definitely, because you never
know if someone back then it was noteworthy enough to
be included somewhere in the historical records on the net.
(10:43):
Right you and you you if you can't get the deed,
but you can if you have other records like surveys,
tax assessors, census um records. Uh, they'll have the name
and ages and occupations of everybody in the house occupation.
That's kind cool, it is very cool. Um, well we'd
be what would we be back then? Yeah? Oh I
(11:06):
was a cobbler for sure, were you? Yeah? Yeah, Cooper?
Really wow? I underestimated you, Jerry, what about you? She
has no idea? And also you can find the occupations
of the people who own the house through a reverse
telephone book. Yes, the polk the polk reverse telephone directory. Yeah,
(11:28):
did you know about these? Had no idea that. It's
just such a smart thing, and it's so it sounds
so old timey reverse telephone directory. Yeah. And that means
you can search by the address. If you don't have
the name, right, you search by address and then it
takes you over the name and that will be at
your library. So now we've moved on from the County Cord.
I'm sorry I forgot to tell everybody we're at the library.
Were the library here? That's why it's so quiet. Yeah,
(11:50):
So that's where you can find the polk directory, and
that's where you can find the occupation, which I think
is probably one of the more interesting things. You can't
in the census records too, well, what if you can't
find it? All? Right, So now you've got we're also
we're in the library still so U sorry. Now now
you've got the name or one of the names of
one of the homeowners who lived in the house before you.
(12:13):
Now it can get interested, right because I suggested the internet.
If the internet uh comes up empty, which it likely
will not likely, but it may, am I that means
you need to look at something called microfiche. Yes, and
if you're under oh i'd say probably thirty years old,
you probably have no idea what microfiche is. So microfiche is, um,
(12:36):
it's micro film. I don't know why they call it
micro fisi instead of micro film. Someone will know and
we'll find out. Yes, Um, basically, it's a ton of
information on a very tiny strip and you use a
little magnifying glass. Actually it's not a little magnifying glass,
is kind of big machine. Right. You can spin through.
You got this cool little dial old timing, and you
can spin through and find um newspaper clippings used to
(13:00):
use it. I'm sure too, right, And yeah, I was
never a microfiche, whiz, but I have used it. It's
pretty fun, but you have to cross references. Like you
you look for what you're looking for, and then you
go through like a decade of newspapers on one film,
and you can find press clippings about whoever's owned your house.
You might find that there was a murder there, or that, um,
(13:22):
there were several murders there. Because frankly, Chuck, isn't that
what everybody is doing? A house history is ultimately looking for.
You know, it's funny, I should show you my note
right here. The real reason is to find out if
anyone's been murdered there exactly. That's the number one reason
I would say anyone would look at their house history.
I would say, let's cut to the chase. But man,
it took us a long time to get to the
ultimate point. I know. Yeah. Um. I do have one
(13:43):
more point about microfiche though, because a lot of people
think they're like Google Masters and research on Google line.
I'm so good at it. You don't know research, dude,
until you get on microfiche. That's where it's really hours
and hours in the library, and it'll seriously test your
investigative skills. Yeah, these people who like write a book
(14:03):
based on a year of experience that they took a
year out of life to go do something and then
they wrote a book about it. Those people don't know
writing a book. Talk to like Norman Mailer, Go talk
to like um Robert Woodward. Go talk to these people
who actually hand to go do research on micro feache
(14:24):
and didn't just blog about something they were doing for
a year. It's not writing a book. That's called lucking out,
it's called dropping out. Wow, so chuck microfiche. Are we
done with that part? Uh? Yeah, I think so. Um.
The library is also we're going to find the census
records so that you were talking about. Wait, I thought
that be at the at the city hall. It could
(14:46):
be in both. Actually, if you strike out at the
city hall, you can look at the library at the
hall at the city Hall. And the other thing you
can look at the library is look up some books.
There may be a book called the history of East
Lake in Atlanta, and start thumbing through it, and there
may be a picture of your house, and you know,
the original mayor of Eastlake lived there. And when you
find that out, try to contain yourself. Remember you're in
(15:07):
a library, don't shout funny. You should bring up east
like Chuck, because number one, that's where you live. Indeed,
and number two, Emily wrote about Eastlake. She did some
research on Eastlake, right yeah, I think she in order
to write the article, she just did a little digging
around about her own hood to uh kind of live
the experience maybe, and she found out some pretty cool stuff. Actually,
(15:29):
I had no idea she did. Eastlake is probably best
known now as the home of the Eastlake Country Club
Old country Club, host of the recent PGA tournament there
for they've been hosting it for a while, right, yeah,
they usually have one tournament there every year, but now
I think they finished the season there every year. So
Tiger Woods was just in town. Hun, he was right
(15:49):
across the street from me. He's kind of foul mouth,
he does, actually, And I was able to make a
couple of hundred bucks parking cars in my yard. That's right.
Last year, Chuck um it up a bloody Mary stand
in his front yard and I was able to sell
one before the cops came and h took the joint down. Chuck.
Chuck Bryant is what we call a hustler. I thought
(16:11):
that was a sterling idea. It was a great idea.
You know, you didn't have a liquor license. Yeah, that
was the only rub there. Soeeah, I was shut down
to it. Sweet. So East Like, as it turns out,
back in the day, the turn of the century, it
was a farm five miles outside of the downtown center
of Atlanta. This was most of America at the turn
of the last century. Absolutely, we should say the last century. Uh.
(16:33):
And it had two creeks and a five spring watershed.
And the owner of a streetcar company in Atlanta bought
this farm. He damned it up and created a lake
and like a beach community around this lake, and the
old built hotels. And it was actually one of the
first quote unquote suburbs of Atlanta, which is funny because
it's the suburbs in Atlanta. Now, are you know, forty
(16:55):
miles away. Yeah, if you're a fan of urban sprawl,
you're gonna love Atlanta. But East Like is Atlanta now,
it's not considered by any stretch of them very much.
Five miles from downtown is that it's just a neighborhood,
although I suspect with traffic the way it is. It
takes as long to get downtown from East Lake these
days as it did in Now you kidding me, No,
(17:16):
I just shoot down to cab Avenue turns into Marriad
and you're there. Uh so the horse and buggy that
was quicker, you think, Uh yeah, Okay, Now you have
hopefully found out the owner of your house, the original owner.
You've gotten some information, and you may have gotten some
information on the building of your house because you said
(17:37):
the reason you would really want to find out to
see if anyone was killed there. There are other reasons
to like if like you were talking about, architecturally, there's
all kinds of architectural oddities. Many times in these old
houses don't make any sense unless you find out the
history of the home. Yeah, Emily says, um that you
might find out that your kitchen is where you're living
room you should be, which explains some of the odd
(17:59):
angles as you which you're talking about your house. Actually,
we don't really have anything that odd, except for the
flooding issue in the basement, which I can't figure out.
But like something more interesting. Let's say you have a
window in your uh this little tiny closet and you think,
why would there ever be a silly little window there?
And then you find out that it was a back
(18:19):
room distillery during prohibition or something. You never know. The
house I grew up in as a child in Talita
had a secret passageway, no way, I kid you not,
in a in the back of a linen closet which
the walls in the back were painted black. Um. If
you pushed on the back wall, you went through a
little door and you crawled through when you were on
(18:39):
the steps going down to the basement on the other
side of the house. So how old was the house?
Do you know? I don't actually like seventies ranch, I
don't think so. No, it's definitely, uh fifties at least. Yeah,
but it was fun to play. How you can go
seeking there? Well, if you, I bet, if you have
some architectural audity in your home and you you know
you're into this kind of thing, would be looking into
(19:00):
for sure. Definitely. Um. Also, if you are a renovator
and you've been tasked with restoring a house, I mean,
how are you how else you going to find out? Yeah?
If you're really big into conservation and you have a say,
an old Victorian home and you really want to bring
it back to its former glory. You should, you know,
respect the original plans of the house. Definitely, and you
(19:21):
can also charge an arm and a leg if you
do all this extra research to renovate to the original state. Absolutely,
and chuck um. One last thing I wanted to mention
um ghosts. Sure, I didn't know this. In California and Hawaii,
you are required to disclose any ghostly activity in a
(19:43):
house when you're selling it. Yeah, I didn't know that.
I didn't either. But if you suspect that there's ghostly
activity in your house, and you don't live in any
of these states, you might go back and find out
that there was that murder that you've been looking for. Yeah,
and how cool is that? What do you want to
part or that? Yeah, if you found out someone is
murdered in your house, wouldn't that be cool? That wouldn't
(20:04):
scare me. I think it was neat unless obviously it
turned into like an amiable horror type of scene. But well, exactly,
that's a good reason, I would say, if you have
blood coming out of your wallpaper, that's a good reason
to research the history. And the other The other final
reason I think is if, um, you might find out
that someone famous used to own it, or someone famous
might have stayed there, and you could potentially get it
(20:26):
listed as a historical site and save that house forever. Yeah.
I'll bet your house ends up on the register in
fifty years. Okay, but I'm gonna find out the history
of it though, all right, are you really? Yeah, I'm
gonna look into it when happens. You're not just saying that? Do?
I usually not follow through my podcast promises. Well, if
you have a really interesting history for your house and
(20:46):
you want a little more detail, you can read Emily's article, Um,
how to find the history of your home. You can
type that in the handy search part works dot com
go find a Sandborn map just to look at him. Yeah,
they are pretty interesting. You can find them online. Um,
in some cases not all um. And since I said
(21:07):
handy search bar, that means, of course that it's time
for a listener maid listener mail Josh. Before we do that,
I just wanted to say that give a special thank
you to the boys and the Henry Clay people. Oh yeah,
I'm I'm holding their couzy right now right. Uh. If
you remember a few weeks ago, we mentioned that some
(21:27):
band in southern California rote us and they were fans
of the show, and I like the CD, and I
tried to get everyone together to go to the performance,
which was a few nights ago, and I was the
only one able to make it, unfortunately. So I met
the boys in the band. I met Joey and Andy,
the two brothers, and I met the drummer. I believe
his name was Mike, and that was the only other
guy I met. Hung out, had some beers. They're super
(21:48):
cool kids, very very talented. And remember we said that
we were going to be at that show, and we
actually had two fans come out seeking us out. And
you introduced your friend justin to them as me as Josh.
I thought it was kind of funny. This lady comes
up in the lobby after the show and I'm hanging
out with the band, and I think your name was
Jeannie and Jeannie. If I got that wrong, I apologize.
(22:11):
I had a few beers at that point, and Jeanne
and her husband came up and introduced themselves and they
were super nice and very complimentary, and they came to
the show on our recommendation and rate Josh and Chuck Sider.
So in the city of Atlanta. We had two people
interested in coming to see us. It's awesome, which is
pretty cool. Well, that's not bad. It's like the people
in Atlanta listening to us, and it was cool. I
(22:33):
talked you know, you know, me and my band stuff.
I just peppered them with questions about being in a band.
I feel, I know we hit it off. I feel
like an honorary Henry Clay person. And you may meet
him in December if you come to l A with me.
I'm not you're not gonna be able to come up.
So you got any letters? Yeah, I got a letter. Um,
this is from Emily, and we're gonna see her last
(22:54):
name because it's a special thing. Emily friedened All wrote us,
I've been a big fan of the podcast since I
discovered them in July. I was working at temp job,
filing and making binders for eight hours at a time
in a back room of a lighting company. Not fun. Um.
The podcast helper get through all this. We get a
lot of these emails of people born jobs. And she
(23:14):
thanks us for that, and then she says, in fact,
it got me so excited about how stuff works and
the topics you covered. I decided it would be kind
of a dream gig to be able to write some
of the articles that you covered. So I went online
submitted materials to be a freelance writer. And I just
found out a few hours ago that I was accepted.
She's a colleague and only is now a co worker,
and she says she can't wait to start rolling on
(23:36):
a project. And have you guys to thank for inspiration
and for helping me put myself out there. And I
emailed her a few times and told her congratulations, welcome aboard,
and you know, we'll try and pick out one of
our articles the podcast. That's awesome. Congratulations Only So she's
she's a co worker officially, Sweet Chuck, is that the
only letter you got? Okay, Um, let's plug Kiva. Yeah,
(23:58):
go ahead. So ok had the bright idea of setting
up a Kiva dot org. Stuff you should know team
uh And if you're not familiar with Kiva, it is
a micro lending website. It's a nonprofit UH, meaning you
don't get any return on investment, but you do get
your investment back if you choose and loans as small
as twenty five dollars go to fund bigger loans for
(24:21):
entrepreneurs in um developing countries, and we talked about it
on the micro Lending uh podcast. If you want to
familiarize yourself with that, you can go listen to that
when it was pretty good. So you can go to www.
Dot Kiva dot org, slash teams, slash stuff you should know,
and you'll come to the Stuff you Should Known Nation's
(24:43):
team page. You can donate whatever you want as little
as twenty five bucks. And like I said, don't forget
you this, this is repaid. The loan is repaid. Uh.
They also have gift certificates on Kiva dot org and
it's a really good cost. And um, we've already got
seven fifty bucks done age I and what like twenty
team members huh. And we're stoked and we want to
(25:03):
call out again the lousy Colbert Report and to see
that learning email we got from somebody. Yeah, yeah, it
was like don't do you know what happens when you
call out student Colbert? Yes, you get his attention, which
is exactly what we're trying to do. So we're calling
we're calling them Outain is lousy fans who are cheap
and we want to Bury. We're the ones that crossover
between share of course, so we we want to beat
(25:26):
them and get their attention and challenge into a kiva off.
So if you have an interesting story about your house,
if there's a murder there chucking, I definitely want to
hear about it. Have any suggestions about the key the team,
let us know or if he's wanted say high, unicorns, tornadoes, torpedoes,
any of that stuff. Send in an email to Stuff
(25:47):
Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff
works dot com. Want more house stuff Works, check out
our blogs on the House of works dot com home page.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
(26:09):
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Chuck, Charles W. Bryant.
(00:20):
Happy leaf ericson Day, Happy leaf ericson Day? And that
is today is leaf ericson Day. And if you remember, Josh,
in our recent podcast on the first Americans May, we
had a little joke. Do you want to hear it?
Let's go back. Okay, I'm gonna go back music. Columbus
was beaten by a good five years by the Norse
(00:43):
who found who were in Newfoundland. That's not what we
were taught in history. And definitely there's no Norse day. No, No,
that'd be awesome. No leaf ericson Day. I don't think
there is not in the US. So there you have it,
and there is a leaf eric today and we both
have a little egg on our faces because we didn't
know that, and it is today, and it's very ironic. Yeah,
(01:06):
But people that wrote in said, I'm assuming it was
a joke that you were I know, that's how we
get away with or I'm going to write the mall
back and say you got it, got the joke. Yeah,
there was actually one guy, if you love delicious Irony,
who said he was making his leaf ericson day Viking
hat while he was listening to that podcast. Yea, where
the Clothes the first American? So yeah, as you said,
(01:28):
happy leaf ericcs and day to utes. So now for
your intro, which I'm sure you had planned before I
eviscerated you know you pretty much you eviscerated me. Really,
maybe it's okay? Well, Chuck, how old your house? Man?
My house was built in nineteen thirty two, I think
thirty two. Very nice old house. Yeah, the one I
(01:49):
live in from nineteen twenty. I believe you always got
to show me up. I know. I'm sorry, buddy, Okay,
it wasn't intentional, you own I rant. How about that?
All right? Well that's the ultimate show up exact. Thank
you for that, Chuck Um. And I've often wondered, like,
what has gone on with this house? There's this mysterious
um tarp that goes across the entire property. A tarp
(02:13):
like a plastic tarp. It's not plastic, it's woven. It
looks like you know what they use for silt fence.
It's just like that, except it's not standing up, and
it's clearly it was purposefully laid down. And my house
is on a hill, so I've often wondered like, did
they build this over an old dump? But did they
even have dumps like that? In this is under your
(02:33):
found the foundation of your house. It doesn't go into
the foundation, but it goes all throughout the yard. And
like I said, it's on a hill, so it could
be just to prevent erosion or something like I'm too
lazy to ask the landlord what the deal is because
they won't have erosion in n No, they didn't. That
was that started in the great Erosion Fire of Yeah. Um,
(02:55):
someone will believe that, probably Happy leaf erricks in day
Chuck YouTube. But my point is is I have no
idea what's going on with my house or what went
in went on in my house. I know it got
a roof like a couple of months ago, and that's
all I know about the house. So the history of
your home is I got a roof a couple of
months ago, exactly as far as I can tell. But
I know some really interesting stuff has gone on there.
(03:17):
Something can't stand for what almost ninety years um and
not have something interesting happening. Agreeing it, you would, you would, hope, right.
And I imagine the same is true for your house,
like I'm sure there's been squatting that had happened there before. Um,
And I know somebody who could go talk to about this,
(03:37):
and that somebody is your wife. Yes, she wrote this article.
I apologize for that intro. That's all right. Emily wrote
this article. And she's a freelance writer for how Stuff Works,
proving it's who you know, Josh agreed in order to
get jobs to some extent, Yes, especially if who you
know is hands down the finest writer at how stuff
(03:59):
Works dot and also has the finest hair. She knows
Robert Lamb. So, Chuck, let's talk about this. Why did
I just mention your wife, baket Chuck, I'm trying to
keep it on you. I thought we just said because
she wrote this article. Okay, I wasn't listening how to
find the history of your house on house to porks
dot com? Would you come up with? Well? Should I
(04:20):
just get Emily in here? Yeah? We probably should actually
teach you how to make soap and how to find
the history of your house all at once. Uh. Well,
you know, there are certain steps you can take, and
we're going to go through those right now, starting with
talk to your neighbors. This new neighborhood, the neighbors, I
don't know anybody. I don't talk to anybody, you mean,
I just moved in a couple of months ago. But
(04:41):
a classic neighborhood though that you live in it is
very much so. And I assume that there the neighborhood
would be much more community oriented. Everybody's kind of doing
their own thing, you know, everybody like kind of says
hi when you're passing by. But it's also a thoroughfare
um for people to get from one place another, So
I think that kind of lends this trans the nature
to it to get people speeding through your neighborhood right exactly,
(05:03):
and everybody's a stranger because of that. Um At the
last neighborhood was it was off of a major thoroughfare
and it was kind of isolated and everybody knew each other.
It was. It was really cool. It reminds me of
a neighborhood that you'd live in as a kid um
because you'd go out and play except playing involved like
heavy drinking that kind of thing. But like, you had
(05:24):
friends in the neighborhood, right, it was cool like that. Um.
But there were some neighbors that had lived there since
the seventies that I knew of, um and had spoken to.
They weren't old timers, but they were I guess they
had grown up there a little bit. They were like, yeah,
this place used to be a hotbed for meth. There's
like a I found out that there had been a
(05:44):
thriving meth lab just a couple of doors down from
my house, in my old house. Yeah, the one in
East Atlanta. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So you can learn some
interesting stuff about your neighborhood just by talking to your
neighbors exactly. So that's step one. Yeah, that's the easiest
way to kind of get you get the ball rolling. Right.
Let's say your neighbors, Um, if you try to go
(06:04):
up to their house and and even if you're greasing
their palms with some cookies, they're they're like, get off
my property. Where do you go from there? Chuck? Well,
if you want to start your investigation in earnest with records,
you should go find the records, which is at the
County Recorder's Office. And Emily makes a good point. She's
she says that although there's a lot of people who
are into digging up the history of their home, I
(06:26):
gat the impression this is a lot like genealogy to
some people, UM, that there's not that many resources for
old timey information online. Now you can't find, um, a
lot of these court records. You know, they're housed on
paper in you know, the depths of city hall usually,
and no one has said, hey, maybe we should take
(06:46):
the time to scan these and put them online. Right,
So what are we going to find at the County
Recorder's office. Well, what you want to find is the
deed history of your house. Okay, you're going to find
a guy in birkenstocks stocks like playing a recorder. You'll
probably find that. Sure, you might smell some incense. And
you want to get the deeds and trace back the
deeds to the original owner. If that's what your ultimate
(07:07):
goal is, to find out who originally built our own
your home. You're also going to find on file. Um,
and what you would take I guess is your plot
number or your address, which it can change, which is
why it's a good idea. To know your plot number.
That doesn't change, right, I would say, Actually, if you
have a house that's sent years old, chances are your
address did change over the years, especially if they doled
(07:30):
it out kind of haphazardly out the h the when
somebody builds a new house or something like that. Nobody
likes to be you know, seven thirty five and a half.
I was a quarter in the l A. My apartment was. Yeah,
it was seven something in a quarter. Because I was
(07:52):
in a four plex apartment building. I thought below half
they just started assigning letters. Do this is l A
because I think they have eights and sixteen people, just
like Crampton and Linen closets. Right. Another thing you can
look for, Josh, is have you ever heard of a
Sandborn map? I hadn't until I read this, and I
went and did a little research on Sandborn, and god,
(08:15):
they were interesting. The Sandborn map company was out of Michigan,
I believe, and they serviced and not in any kind
of dirty way. The fire insurance industry. Apparently insurance maps
were big as a whole back then. Yeah, if you were,
you know, located in Delaware, if your insurance company was
(08:35):
located in Delaware, and you had somebody in Taos, New
Mexico who wanted fire insurance from you. Um, what are
you gonna do? Send some guy out to look at
every single one? Now, your contract with the Sandborn Map
Company to make maps of twelve thousand cities and towns
around the United States and from eighteen sixty seven and
(08:57):
nineteen seventies and drawn aerial maps. And these things were detailed, man,
I mean like they they look like um land use
maps of today. Um Like there's not a little tiles
drawn in or bricks or anything like that, but I
mean like they're detailed, Like here's the closest fire hydrant.
Here's how many sprinklers this house has. Here's where the
(09:18):
windows are. Here's what the building nearby is used for.
I was looking at one. I can't remember what town
it was, but there was like the foundry or the
old foundry, and it said like vacant. And then there's
the other foundry nearby, and here's these houses. Is the
drawing of a city, And they did it all over
the place. And again they did it too for the
fire insurance industry. But these towns also got copies of
(09:40):
these maps, and a lot of them have them on
file because it was for the fire insurance. Was why
you get detailed like where the windows and doors were.
And I think it also says what materials your house
was made up. Right. They also did them in Mexico
and Canada. They also did um maps on sugar refinery
(10:00):
in places like Cuba and whiskey distilleries throughout the country. Um,
because those things tend to explode. And uh yeah, they
the Sandborn company basically made it so that you can
find what your house looked like any any time during
this period or where what else is around. It's really
cool because they also included street names and addresses. So
(10:21):
if you're if your city has a Sandborn map, you
are in luck. Yes, agreed. Um. The other thing you
can do is well, if you if you are able
to trace the deed back to the original owner, you
can go to the internet. Then if you've got a name,
it's always worth a try. Oh, definitely, because you never
know if someone back then it was noteworthy enough to
be included somewhere in the historical records on the net.
(10:43):
Right you and you you if you can't get the deed,
but you can if you have other records like surveys,
tax assessors, census um records. Uh, they'll have the name
and ages and occupations of everybody in the house occupation.
That's kind cool, it is very cool. Um, well we'd
be what would we be back then? Yeah? Oh I
(11:06):
was a cobbler for sure, were you? Yeah? Yeah, Cooper?
Really wow? I underestimated you, Jerry, what about you? She
has no idea? And also you can find the occupations
of the people who own the house through a reverse
telephone book. Yes, the polk the polk reverse telephone directory. Yeah,
(11:28):
did you know about these? Had no idea that. It's
just such a smart thing, and it's so it sounds
so old timey reverse telephone directory. Yeah. And that means
you can search by the address. If you don't have
the name, right, you search by address and then it
takes you over the name and that will be at
your library. So now we've moved on from the County Cord.
I'm sorry I forgot to tell everybody we're at the library.
Were the library here? That's why it's so quiet. Yeah,
(11:50):
So that's where you can find the polk directory, and
that's where you can find the occupation, which I think
is probably one of the more interesting things. You can't
in the census records too, well, what if you can't
find it? All? Right, So now you've got we're also
we're in the library still so U sorry. Now now
you've got the name or one of the names of
one of the homeowners who lived in the house before you.
(12:13):
Now it can get interested, right because I suggested the internet.
If the internet uh comes up empty, which it likely
will not likely, but it may, am I that means
you need to look at something called microfiche. Yes, and
if you're under oh i'd say probably thirty years old,
you probably have no idea what microfiche is. So microfiche is, um,
(12:36):
it's micro film. I don't know why they call it
micro fisi instead of micro film. Someone will know and
we'll find out. Yes, Um, basically, it's a ton of
information on a very tiny strip and you use a
little magnifying glass. Actually it's not a little magnifying glass,
is kind of big machine. Right. You can spin through.
You got this cool little dial old timing, and you
can spin through and find um newspaper clippings used to
(13:00):
use it. I'm sure too, right, And yeah, I was
never a microfiche, whiz, but I have used it. It's
pretty fun, but you have to cross references. Like you
you look for what you're looking for, and then you
go through like a decade of newspapers on one film,
and you can find press clippings about whoever's owned your house.
You might find that there was a murder there, or that, um,
(13:22):
there were several murders there. Because frankly, Chuck, isn't that
what everybody is doing? A house history is ultimately looking for.
You know, it's funny, I should show you my note
right here. The real reason is to find out if
anyone's been murdered there exactly. That's the number one reason
I would say anyone would look at their house history.
I would say, let's cut to the chase. But man,
it took us a long time to get to the
ultimate point. I know. Yeah. Um. I do have one
(13:43):
more point about microfiche though, because a lot of people
think they're like Google Masters and research on Google line.
I'm so good at it. You don't know research, dude,
until you get on microfiche. That's where it's really hours
and hours in the library, and it'll seriously test your
investigative skills. Yeah, these people who like write a book
(14:03):
based on a year of experience that they took a
year out of life to go do something and then
they wrote a book about it. Those people don't know
writing a book. Talk to like Norman Mailer, Go talk
to like um Robert Woodward. Go talk to these people
who actually hand to go do research on micro feache
(14:24):
and didn't just blog about something they were doing for
a year. It's not writing a book. That's called lucking out,
it's called dropping out. Wow, so chuck microfiche. Are we
done with that part? Uh? Yeah, I think so. Um.
The library is also we're going to find the census
records so that you were talking about. Wait, I thought
that be at the at the city hall. It could
(14:46):
be in both. Actually, if you strike out at the
city hall, you can look at the library at the
hall at the city Hall. And the other thing you
can look at the library is look up some books.
There may be a book called the history of East
Lake in Atlanta, and start thumbing through it, and there
may be a picture of your house, and you know,
the original mayor of Eastlake lived there. And when you
find that out, try to contain yourself. Remember you're in
(15:07):
a library, don't shout funny. You should bring up east
like Chuck, because number one, that's where you live. Indeed,
and number two, Emily wrote about Eastlake. She did some
research on Eastlake, right yeah, I think she in order
to write the article, she just did a little digging
around about her own hood to uh kind of live
the experience maybe, and she found out some pretty cool stuff. Actually,
(15:29):
I had no idea she did. Eastlake is probably best
known now as the home of the Eastlake Country Club
Old country Club, host of the recent PGA tournament there
for they've been hosting it for a while, right, yeah,
they usually have one tournament there every year, but now
I think they finished the season there every year. So
Tiger Woods was just in town. Hun, he was right
(15:49):
across the street from me. He's kind of foul mouth,
he does, actually, And I was able to make a
couple of hundred bucks parking cars in my yard. That's right.
Last year, Chuck um it up a bloody Mary stand
in his front yard and I was able to sell
one before the cops came and h took the joint down. Chuck.
Chuck Bryant is what we call a hustler. I thought
(16:11):
that was a sterling idea. It was a great idea.
You know, you didn't have a liquor license. Yeah, that
was the only rub there. Soeeah, I was shut down
to it. Sweet. So East Like, as it turns out,
back in the day, the turn of the century, it
was a farm five miles outside of the downtown center
of Atlanta. This was most of America at the turn
of the last century. Absolutely, we should say the last century. Uh.
(16:33):
And it had two creeks and a five spring watershed.
And the owner of a streetcar company in Atlanta bought
this farm. He damned it up and created a lake
and like a beach community around this lake, and the
old built hotels. And it was actually one of the
first quote unquote suburbs of Atlanta, which is funny because
it's the suburbs in Atlanta. Now, are you know, forty
(16:55):
miles away. Yeah, if you're a fan of urban sprawl,
you're gonna love Atlanta. But East Like is Atlanta now,
it's not considered by any stretch of them very much.
Five miles from downtown is that it's just a neighborhood,
although I suspect with traffic the way it is. It
takes as long to get downtown from East Lake these
days as it did in Now you kidding me, No,
(17:16):
I just shoot down to cab Avenue turns into Marriad
and you're there. Uh so the horse and buggy that
was quicker, you think, Uh yeah, Okay, Now you have
hopefully found out the owner of your house, the original owner.
You've gotten some information, and you may have gotten some
information on the building of your house because you said
(17:37):
the reason you would really want to find out to
see if anyone was killed there. There are other reasons
to like if like you were talking about, architecturally, there's
all kinds of architectural oddities. Many times in these old
houses don't make any sense unless you find out the
history of the home. Yeah, Emily says, um that you
might find out that your kitchen is where you're living
room you should be, which explains some of the odd
(17:59):
angles as you which you're talking about your house. Actually,
we don't really have anything that odd, except for the
flooding issue in the basement, which I can't figure out.
But like something more interesting. Let's say you have a
window in your uh this little tiny closet and you think,
why would there ever be a silly little window there?
And then you find out that it was a back
(18:19):
room distillery during prohibition or something. You never know. The
house I grew up in as a child in Talita
had a secret passageway, no way, I kid you not,
in a in the back of a linen closet which
the walls in the back were painted black. Um. If
you pushed on the back wall, you went through a
little door and you crawled through when you were on
(18:39):
the steps going down to the basement on the other
side of the house. So how old was the house?
Do you know? I don't actually like seventies ranch, I
don't think so. No, it's definitely, uh fifties at least. Yeah,
but it was fun to play. How you can go
seeking there? Well, if you, I bet, if you have
some architectural audity in your home and you you know
you're into this kind of thing, would be looking into
(19:00):
for sure. Definitely. Um. Also, if you are a renovator
and you've been tasked with restoring a house, I mean,
how are you how else you going to find out? Yeah?
If you're really big into conservation and you have a say,
an old Victorian home and you really want to bring
it back to its former glory. You should, you know,
respect the original plans of the house. Definitely, and you
(19:21):
can also charge an arm and a leg if you
do all this extra research to renovate to the original state. Absolutely,
and chuck um. One last thing I wanted to mention
um ghosts. Sure, I didn't know this. In California and Hawaii,
you are required to disclose any ghostly activity in a
(19:43):
house when you're selling it. Yeah, I didn't know that.
I didn't either. But if you suspect that there's ghostly
activity in your house, and you don't live in any
of these states, you might go back and find out
that there was that murder that you've been looking for. Yeah,
and how cool is that? What do you want to
part or that? Yeah, if you found out someone is
murdered in your house, wouldn't that be cool? That wouldn't
(20:04):
scare me. I think it was neat unless obviously it
turned into like an amiable horror type of scene. But well, exactly,
that's a good reason, I would say, if you have
blood coming out of your wallpaper, that's a good reason
to research the history. And the other The other final
reason I think is if, um, you might find out
that someone famous used to own it, or someone famous
might have stayed there, and you could potentially get it
(20:26):
listed as a historical site and save that house forever. Yeah.
I'll bet your house ends up on the register in
fifty years. Okay, but I'm gonna find out the history
of it though, all right, are you really? Yeah, I'm
gonna look into it when happens. You're not just saying that? Do?
I usually not follow through my podcast promises. Well, if
you have a really interesting history for your house and
(20:46):
you want a little more detail, you can read Emily's article, Um,
how to find the history of your home. You can
type that in the handy search part works dot com
go find a Sandborn map just to look at him. Yeah,
they are pretty interesting. You can find them online. Um,
in some cases not all um. And since I said
(21:07):
handy search bar, that means, of course that it's time
for a listener maid listener mail Josh. Before we do that,
I just wanted to say that give a special thank
you to the boys and the Henry Clay people. Oh yeah,
I'm I'm holding their couzy right now right. Uh. If
you remember a few weeks ago, we mentioned that some
(21:27):
band in southern California rote us and they were fans
of the show, and I like the CD, and I
tried to get everyone together to go to the performance,
which was a few nights ago, and I was the
only one able to make it, unfortunately. So I met
the boys in the band. I met Joey and Andy,
the two brothers, and I met the drummer. I believe
his name was Mike, and that was the only other
guy I met. Hung out, had some beers. They're super
(21:48):
cool kids, very very talented. And remember we said that
we were going to be at that show, and we
actually had two fans come out seeking us out. And
you introduced your friend justin to them as me as Josh.
I thought it was kind of funny. This lady comes
up in the lobby after the show and I'm hanging
out with the band, and I think your name was
Jeannie and Jeannie. If I got that wrong, I apologize.
(22:11):
I had a few beers at that point, and Jeanne
and her husband came up and introduced themselves and they
were super nice and very complimentary, and they came to
the show on our recommendation and rate Josh and Chuck Sider.
So in the city of Atlanta. We had two people
interested in coming to see us. It's awesome, which is
pretty cool. Well, that's not bad. It's like the people
in Atlanta listening to us, and it was cool. I
(22:33):
talked you know, you know, me and my band stuff.
I just peppered them with questions about being in a band.
I feel, I know we hit it off. I feel
like an honorary Henry Clay person. And you may meet
him in December if you come to l A with me.
I'm not you're not gonna be able to come up.
So you got any letters? Yeah, I got a letter. Um,
this is from Emily, and we're gonna see her last
(22:54):
name because it's a special thing. Emily friedened All wrote us,
I've been a big fan of the podcast since I
discovered them in July. I was working at temp job,
filing and making binders for eight hours at a time
in a back room of a lighting company. Not fun. Um.
The podcast helper get through all this. We get a
lot of these emails of people born jobs. And she
(23:14):
thanks us for that, and then she says, in fact,
it got me so excited about how stuff works and
the topics you covered. I decided it would be kind
of a dream gig to be able to write some
of the articles that you covered. So I went online
submitted materials to be a freelance writer. And I just
found out a few hours ago that I was accepted.
She's a colleague and only is now a co worker,
and she says she can't wait to start rolling on
(23:36):
a project. And have you guys to thank for inspiration
and for helping me put myself out there. And I
emailed her a few times and told her congratulations, welcome aboard,
and you know, we'll try and pick out one of
our articles the podcast. That's awesome. Congratulations Only So she's
she's a co worker officially, Sweet Chuck, is that the
only letter you got? Okay, Um, let's plug Kiva. Yeah,
(23:58):
go ahead. So ok had the bright idea of setting
up a Kiva dot org. Stuff you should know team
uh And if you're not familiar with Kiva, it is
a micro lending website. It's a nonprofit UH, meaning you
don't get any return on investment, but you do get
your investment back if you choose and loans as small
as twenty five dollars go to fund bigger loans for
(24:21):
entrepreneurs in um developing countries, and we talked about it
on the micro Lending uh podcast. If you want to
familiarize yourself with that, you can go listen to that
when it was pretty good. So you can go to www.
Dot Kiva dot org, slash teams, slash stuff you should know,
and you'll come to the Stuff you Should Known Nation's
(24:43):
team page. You can donate whatever you want as little
as twenty five bucks. And like I said, don't forget
you this, this is repaid. The loan is repaid. Uh.
They also have gift certificates on Kiva dot org and
it's a really good cost. And um, we've already got
seven fifty bucks done age I and what like twenty
team members huh. And we're stoked and we want to
(25:03):
call out again the lousy Colbert Report and to see
that learning email we got from somebody. Yeah, yeah, it
was like don't do you know what happens when you
call out student Colbert? Yes, you get his attention, which
is exactly what we're trying to do. So we're calling
we're calling them Outain is lousy fans who are cheap
and we want to Bury. We're the ones that crossover
between share of course, so we we want to beat
(25:26):
them and get their attention and challenge into a kiva off.
So if you have an interesting story about your house,
if there's a murder there chucking, I definitely want to
hear about it. Have any suggestions about the key the team,
let us know or if he's wanted say high, unicorns, tornadoes, torpedoes,
any of that stuff. Send in an email to Stuff
(25:47):
Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff
works dot com. Want more house stuff Works, check out
our blogs on the House of works dot com home page.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
(26:09):
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Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.