Journal
How to trace the history of a house, who built the neighborhoods we live in, and what a century of deeds, census schedules, and newspaper pages reveal when you read them block by block.
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HM Land Registry and the Price Paid record, the 1841–1921 census and electoral registers, the listed-buildings register, the London Metropolitan Archives, Goad fire-insurance plans, and parish records reaching back centuries — a guide to tracing a London house.
May 30, 2026 · 5 min read
A step-by-step guide to every free source — ACRIS deeds, PLUTO, the 1940s and 1980s tax photos, the census, old newspapers, the NYPL map division, and landmark status — for tracing who built your house and who lived in it.
May 28, 2026 · 5 min read
Deeds tell you who owned a house. To learn who actually lived there — the families, the boarders, the occupations and origins — you need the census, city directories, newspapers, and a little detective work. Here's how.
May 27, 2026 · 4 min read
HM Land Registry and the Price Paid record, the 1841–1921 census and electoral registers, the listed-buildings register, the London Metropolitan Archives, Goad fire-insurance plans, and parish records reaching back centuries — a guide to tracing a London house.
May 30, 2026 · 5 min read
King County parcel data with real year-built, the Recorder's LandmarkWeb deed search, the Seattle Public Library and Puget Sound Regional Archives, Sanborn maps, and the census — how to trace a Seattle house from a Ballard bungalow to a Capitol Hill foursquare.
May 30, 2026 · 4 min read
OpenDataPhilly's parcel data, the Department of Records deed search, the Free Library and the Philadelphia City Archives, the famous Hexamer insurance surveys, Sanborn maps, and the census — how to trace a Philadelphia rowhouse back to the colonial grid.
May 29, 2026 · 4 min read
A step-by-step guide to every free source — ACRIS deeds, PLUTO, the 1940s and 1980s tax photos, the census, old newspapers, the NYPL map division, and landmark status — for tracing who built your house and who lived in it.
May 28, 2026 · 5 min read
The Base Adresse Nationale and the cadastre, the Archives de Paris and the état civil rebuilt after the 1871 fires, Gallica for historic press, and the sommier foncier — a guide to tracing a Parisian house through Haussmann's rebuilding and beyond.
May 28, 2026 · 4 min read
Denver's combined city-and-county assessor and Clerk & Recorder, the Denver Public Library's Western History collection, Sanborn maps, the census, and the subdivision plats that built the streetcar suburbs — a practical guide to tracing a Denver house.
May 28, 2026 · 4 min read
England, Scotland, and Wales keep their records differently. HM Land Registry and Registers of Scotland, the three listed-building registers (NHLE, Historic Environment Scotland, Cadw), the census, and parish records — the GB-wide picture for tracing a house.
May 29, 2026 · 4 min read
Deeds tell you who owned a house. To learn who actually lived there — the families, the boarders, the occupations and origins — you need the census, city directories, newspapers, and a little detective work. Here's how.
May 27, 2026 · 4 min read
Grantor and grantee, consideration, mortgages and satisfactions, the gaps that mean an inheritance — a guide to reading a chain of title like a historian, and an honest account of what it can and can't tell you.
May 23, 2026 · 4 min read
Australia's Trove and New Zealand's Papers Past are among the best free digitised newspaper archives in the world — and they're a house historian's secret weapon. How to use them, and an honest word on whose history the record begins with.
May 23, 2026 · 4 min read
Tax photos, library and historical-society collections, newspaper morgues, real-estate listings, aerial surveys, and Google Street View's own archive — a practical guide to finding a picture of your house as it used to be, and the honest odds for each source.
May 23, 2026 · 4 min read
Drawn to help insurers price risk, the Sanborn maps accidentally recorded American cities building by building — material, height, use, footprint — across decades. Here's what they are, how to read the colors, and where to find them free.
May 22, 2026 · 3 min read
The Franciscan Cadastre of 1817, the French cadastre, the Florentine catasto of 1427, and the parish registers — why European house history reaches back further than American, and what those records actually let you find.
May 25, 2026 · 4 min read
Read enough deeds, censuses, and maps across a single block and the big forces of American history — immigration, the streetcar, redlining, white flight, gentrification — stop being abstractions. Here's what the records show, and how to read them honestly.
May 20, 2026 · 4 min read