History's Mysteries

So, apparently Mike has made it mandatory that I put in everything from the town historian. Here it is:

We met up with Joani over at the museum and she gave us a bunch of information that she had on the house and now we have a real time line for the place with only a couple of holes...

November 26th, 1890 A.S. MacDonald and E.C. Standard bought the property in the exact lots as it is now.

May 14th, 1892 E.C. Standard sold his half to A.S. MacDonald

1893 A $300 improvement was put on the property (aka a house).

1894 The first time there is tax on the house.

September 25th, 1897 F.M. Jack bought the house at a sheriff’s sale

August 3rd, 1900 There is another record of sale, but no indication as to whom it was sold to. It is surmised that the sale was to another of the Jack family as Martha Jack lived in the house until the year of her death, 1922.

1922 - 1950's...unknown owners

1955 or slightly before The McFarlin's moved into the house. This date we aren't sure of yet. We found an article about their son drowning when he was 11 years old in 1966 and it said that he was born in 1955 and lived in Brownsville his entire life so we are making the assumption that they were in this house from at least the time of his birth if not before that. We are still researching that part.

1996 Anita Esquival bought the house

2006 We bought the house!

We then headed over to the house for her to walk through and tell us what the deal is with some of the oddities in the house. Once Joani got over here, she started in right away. The little fake shutter things weren't original and had to go. Plus the trellis on the porch needed to go as well. Those 2 things disturbed her greatly along with the little frilly things on the porch posts. She didn't say exactly that they needed to be taken down because she is of the opinion that it's our house and we could do what we wished, but she really REALLY hated them.

The mystery of the low windows is basically solved, that's actually how they built houses back then to allow for the outside facade to look balanced and the inside didn't matter as it wasn't the public areas. Along that same vein, the differences in the moldings from downstairs to upstairs make sense as well as only the nice expensive moldings with intricate detail would be in the public areas. Next thing she said is that putting the walls back would be appropriate to the house. Also, the stairs are definitely original along with the balusters, banister and newel posts. The area that looks like it was an addition (the bathroom/pantry area) is not. It was actually the kitchen because they would always build a single story kitchen off the back or sides of the house so that it wouldn't be under any living spaces in the main part of the house. Basically this confirms the suspicions that the current dining room/office and the kitchen were actually downstairs bedrooms, that there were no bathrooms and that the addition is original. Also confirmed is that the windows in the kitchen are not original and that there was only 1 window on the side of the house. We actually saw in old pictures that there was the one tall window in the kitchen (bedroom) and only the bay windows in the dining room (bedroom). We knew that the outside of the house under the kitchen window didn't look right. The breakfast nook and porch was definitely not part of the house. She also confirmed that the house was lower because when you look at the bottom of the house there are supposed to be 3 different levels of water protection and then the foundation and we have none of those just the more modern T-111 as skirting. If we put it back the way it was, the house would have to be at least 4 feet higher to accommodate it all.

So that was the visit with her. We went yesterday to the Pioneer Picture Gallery and that's where we saw pictures of the house dating in the 1960's and 1970's when the McFarlin's owned the house. Even at that point, the house was higher than it is now. Plus, we saw the breakfast nook on the house at that point, so we know they were the ones that added that. With all the shortcuts they took and all the not caring about detail, I'm really surprised that they bothered to match the siding on the outside, but they did. We also were able to see that the porch was not there, so that was from Anita's time. We also saw that there was a different shed or outbuilding behind the house during their time. Finally, they had one thing then that we are bound and determined to bring back to this place...orderly landscaping with GRASS!!!!!!

More history and detail as we go along and find out. Maybe next time Mike will post it as this is really his deal. :P

posted by Unknown @ Monday, July 03, 2006