10:21 a.m. - 2006-04-18
Getting Plaqued

The History of a House

We spent the yesterday in the research room of the Kane County recorder of deeds. We have decided to research our house, the prize being a handpainted plaque with the date it was built to display on the front of our house. The handbook put out by the Gifford Park Historical Association here in Elgin said to start searching the chain of title.

We spent two hours perusing a huge handwritten book with yellowed pages with cryptic notations and hard to decipher property descriptions. The whole concept of how to read this book was something we had to spend a half hour just getting our minds around and if it wasn't for the extremely dedicated and helpful employees at the office we would have never been able to find what we were looking for.

We came away with 16 copies of deeds, mortgages, quick claim deeds and even a copy of a will tracking it all the way back to before the home was built. One question remains to be answered. Did the guy who sold the property in 1936 when the home was built, build a spec home and sell it to the first inhabitant or did he sell the bare land, and did the first inhabitant build the home himself.

From other research I have done, I have sort of guessed that our home was built from a kit such as what Sears used to sell, but I don't think it is a Sears...Montgomery Wards used to sell houses also in kit form....delivered by the railroad for the homeowner to build himself or have built by a builder. The Sears homes are actually a coveted "antique" and discoving this was a Sears home would surely add to it's value. Unfortunately, it does not match in any way, the plans I have uncovered for the Cape Cod Style offered by Sears at the time.

One thing we did discover....this search will take a long long time. Next searches will lead up to the local Elgin office where old building permits are filed. We have old neighbors across the street who have been here 50 years. We could talk to them and see what they know.

There are county tax records to go through, the old Elgin Directories which are hard bound phone books and even date back to before phones listing names and addresses of residents along with their place of employment and occupation. It is so much fun living in a town with such a rich and preserved history.

One thing we did find yesterday that has us intrigued. At one point in time the trail went cold. The helpful clerks in the office made suggestions that set us back on track.

In 1944, the first occupants of the house were given 500.00 as a down payment for the house and apparently were going to finance it. Before the deal went down, the homeowner died and the home was tied up in probate. At the time, it was not customary for a wife to be on the deed with the husband. She had to wait for it to be deeded to her then immediately put it in a trust. That was the last entry until 2 years later when the guy who put his 500.00 (a large sum of money back then) was able to get his money back and the home was deeded to the heirs of the widow who in that two years time, remarried and died. Finally after that everything settled out and the house was again passed from owner to owner without a hitch.

We traced the property back to some guy who willed the entire block we live on (none of the homes yet built) to his heirs. The trail then runs cold until some person with a fancy name of G. Radcliffe Stevens, sells it to the first inhabitants of the house.

Until the addition which added an extra bedroom, family room and 3 season porch, this home was a tiny, 2 bedroom Cape Cod and no ownder lived in it more than 6 years until the early 70's when those people stayed 16 years then sold it to our sellers who lived in it 17. We know our sellers did not build the addition and are surmising that it must have been built by the people before them, thus allowing both owners to stay and raise their families there rather than move on to bigger homes.

Most surprised of all is me who's husband never wanted a yard, yet finds he LOVES yardwork and who never wanted an old home because he thought is would be falling apart.....this curmudgeon who has insisted we live our entire married life in a condo now was heard stating; "This is fun, I wonder if people would pay to have their house researched. I wonder if I could do this for a living?"

P. I. Yarnsmith

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