How old is your house? and the Dark Lens of Vietnam in Newtown this week

 

                                    



This house is from Rose Valley looking for an address or location



 

How old is your house ?

 

   The older a house is the harder it is to determine a date of erection. Title searching is still

the only way to go unless you are blessed and your house has a date stone. Today I want to

talk about post Civil War housing. Doing a title search at the court house is not hard and on

the bottom of your current deed it will tell when the person you bought the house from and

when it was purchased and it will also give you the book and page. All you have to do is just

go back till when your house was built. The deed will mention just a lot and the price for

just a lot will be in the hundreds not  thousands of dollars. The price is the best way along

with reading the deed itself. But many people do not realize just because people bought an

empty lot does not mean they built the house right away. They might have waited months and

even years before building. So how do you find out? The local newspaper. All local

newspapers prior to 1950, and that is a very approximate date, newspapers had all

the  local information inside. Besides all the local gossip, local building and owners

 and builders were very important. I have worked with many local papers but

the Morton Chronicle is one of the best for south central Delaware County.

The editor covered all the local building news from Chester to Darby and all the

way to Media. The Morton Chronicle newspaper spoke of when the building began,

who the builder was and home owner and sometimes even the architect for the building.

In some cases I found out what day the home owner moved in. The Chester Times

also carries all this information. Beginning  circa. 1890 the Times had separate

columns on different towns and townships and discussed everything from birthday

parties, vacations to buildings. So if you are looking for that date when your house

was built or just that odd bit of information check the local newspapers, many are on

line thru the Delaware County library system website. There were  many other local newspapers

that no longer exist today. The Delaware County Historical Society has the most at their

museum in Chester and they are being scanned and digitized and in many cases being

made searchable. So take a look, you may be very surprised.

 

Newtown Historical Society

Presents

"The Dark Lens of Vietnam"

on February 18

at 7:30 pm

40 years after the fall of Saigon, join popular MNHS history teacher Arch Hunter who will speak on "The Dark Lens of Vietnam". He will review the background history of Indochina through WWII, and the colonial war of Ho Chi Minh & the French. He then picks up on the initial involvement of the U.S. in Vietnam from the Geneva Conference of 1954 thru the fall of Saigon in 1975. Most of the focus will be placed on our military involvement, the role of our military , and the misconceptions of the American public about our military in Vietnam, concluding with how the experience of Vietnam has clouded the "Vietnam Era" generation.

And, if time permits , what lessons did we learn from the Vietnam War? It is a topic that stirs up old divisions among those who lived through the era. With 40 years of hindsight, have we moved closer to a consensus on Vietnam, or will that judgment be made by future generations?All programs are held at the Dunwoody Village auditorium, 3500 West Chester Pike, Newtown Square, PA  19073 beginning at 7:30 p.m.  

Admission is free.  Refreshments are served.  Come out and meet your history minded neighbors and learn and be entertained!