When a House Becomes Part of the Family History

 

What would you do if you discovered the home of one of your ancestors was still standing? 

I know what I'd do. If I were in the neighborhood, I'd hop in my car and at least drive by the place, craning my neck to spy every detail I could from my roadside vantage point.

Unfortunately, when I read the entry in Harry Wright Newman's book, Anne Arundel Gentry, concerning the three hundred year old Maryland property of Joseph Howard, seventh great-grandfather of my mother-in-law, I wasn't exactly in the neighborhood. So I did the next best thing: I googled it.

According to Anne Arundel Gentry, when Joseph Howard combined some of his inherited properties and had them re-surveyed, he named the new parcel "Howard's Inheritance." The Newman book noted that the home built on the property was called Mulberry Hill, and that—at least as of the date of writing his 1933 book—it was still standing.

To Google I went, typing in those two names: Howard's Inheritance and Mulberry Hill. Narrowing my search to Anne Arundel County, I discovered a list of properties in the county which were included on the National Register of Historic Places.

Sure enough, on the list there was an entry for a place called Howard's Inheritance, complete with a brief description of the house and a photo. Better yet, a footnote led me to the actual application for registration, provided by the Maryland Historical Trust.

Clicking through to the seventy four page file posted on the MHT website, I perused the entire application. There, I found a simple description of the property—a one and a half story gambrel-roofed brick house with a hall parlor plan—and a great deal more detail.

After paging through the application, I reached what some people call a house history. While I was fascinated to delve into greater detail on who lived in the home, despite seeing a few familiar names—at least I spotted Cornelius—from the Howard family history, it quickly became evident that despite the correct name for the property, this was not the place owned by my mother-in-law's ancestor.

Trying to find yet another home called by the same names—Howard's Inheritance and Mulberry Hill—seemed a fruitless effort. Coming up with every alternate search term I could think of, I finally discovered another application under the name "Mulberry Hill, (Howard's Inheritance)." Unlike the other application, labeled "AA-136" ("AA" for the county, Anne Arundel), this second National Register application sported the number AA-195.

This application was also for a one and a half story gambrel-roofed brick house. However, by the time I reached the fifteenth page, I could tell this was indeed the application for the house once owned by Joseph Howard. Actually noted in the narrative was this remark:

The house bears some similarities to another brick house with a gambrel roof, Howard's Inheritance (AA-136), which was also built on a large tract of land belonging to the Howard family.

Both applications include a floor plan and many photographs of the property, the later numbered application being the property which, according to the narrative, was owned by seven generations of Joseph Howard's family, up until the time when it was sold in the early 1900s.  

A Place Once Called Home

 

Ever have a need to do some in-person research but no excuse to travel to that particular location? In the case of my husband's Stevens ancestors in Lafayette, Indiana, I am now wishing I could see the place once called home by John Stevens' millionaire brother-in-law, James Murdock. But can I find a photo of this Queen Anne style home built in 1890? Not so far.

Taking a two thousand mile trip, just for the purpose of gawking at a century-old home isn't in my budget just now. But that's just about how much I want to see this place. So what do I do? Look even further online. Surely someone has parked a pic of James Murdock's home.

Of course, James himself didn't really help me find the place. Since his wife had died before him, it is possible that he had good reasons for dispensing with the upkeep of such a place. After all, all his children were grown by the time their mother passed away. Then again, realizing Joanna Burke Murdock's date of death was about the same time as the home's completion in 1890, perhaps staying in the home was more than her widowed husband could bear.

Looking for the place became a challenge in its own right. Since I couldn't quite find James Murdock in the 1900 census, I looked for each of his sons. In the 1900 census, Charles, the elder of the two sons, was living on a street labeled only as "B-12." This wasn't much help, as the Murdock home was said to have been located on Columbia Street in the Saint Mary's Historic District.

James' younger son, Samuel, turned out to live on the same street—B-12—along with his own wife and family including, thankfully, his father James.

Fortunately, online references to the historic district include an address for the James Murdock house—1307 Columbia Street—as well as one pertinent detail which might lead to our answer about the homes on B-12 Street. Apparently, the Murdock home was subsequently sold to a man by the name of Ferdinand Dreyfus.

No date was given for this exchange of property, but you know we can use another way to fact check this little detail. After all, a genealogist's first question might be: where was Mr. Dreyfus for the 1900 census enumeration? 

Not such an easy chase, the answer to that question. It turns out that Ferdinand—if that was ever his name to begin with—preferred going by the name Fred. And while Fred Dreyfus and his family did show up in the 1900 census in Lafayette, the address given for his home connected to an equally enigmatic street name: B-14. Luckily, though, we also had the house number—remember, we had found it on another website—and it strangely aligned perfectly with the house number for the former Murdock House: 1307.

Could it be that the road now known as Columbia Street once had the more austere designation of a simple letter and number? After all, many street names have changed over the years—not to mention, house numbering systems, and even the construction of roadways, themselves. 

Since I am, after all, well over two thousand miles from Lafayette at the moment, I can't very well simply scoot on over to take a look for myself. But I have a hunch the Murdock place became the Dreyfus residence not long after it was built. And "B-14" may well have been the street designation for the road we now know as Columbia Street.

While I did find some photographs of historic buildings in James' neighborhood on a virtual walking tour website for the city of Lafayette, and also a possible picture of the home of James' son Charles, I have yet to accomplish my goal of seeing what James Murdock's home looked like. In the process, though, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of melancholy at the realization of the man's loss in the process of bringing that home to life for his family. You know there has got to be more to this story...