House History Update-June 2015

Don't forget, you can click on the images to enlarge!

The Duff family property deeds 

1864 deed -Thanks, Dad!

I finally buckled down and gave my optic muscles an Olympic workout by reading the hand scratched property deed from December 24th, 1864. The deed is executing the will of Samuel Duff, partitioning out 163 acres to his six sons. He was pretty diplomatic, making sure each son got the same amount of land. He divided up the land in equal lots, and gave his eldest son (or favorite son?) the lot with the "mansion house" on it. As much as I love the idea of living in a mansion, this is not our house. The next eldest son got the second choice, etc

The deed also mandates a private road parallel to the railroad that all parties would have access to. That railroad is still in existence and operational. We occasionally hear that distant whistle of the freight line that runs over it. I have an odd fascination with freight trains. They mesmerize me, so this is definitely a perk.

Sam Duff Sr was an Irish immigrant who busted his ass as a carpenter and contractor and bought 175 acres in 1831, using at least some of that land for farming. The 1864 deed references some land being mandated for farming in Willbrook, but doesn't give any more details beyond that.  He had nine children that lived to adulthood with his wife Isabella. What happened to those unaccounted for twelve acres? I hope to find out by the next blog entry.....

Annoyingly, the son that took the land that our house now sits on is also named Samuel Duff. He received 22 and 1/4 acres from his father.

Samuel A Duff Jr was an ice merchant who owned a huge ice plant in the next county over. He one upped his parents by having ten children that lived to adulthood with his wife Matilda.

The mysterious Matilda and Mary

According to a local newspaper biography sent to us by a historian, both generations of Samuel Duffs had daughters they named Matilda and Mary, which just adds to my general irritation and confusion. If this is accurate the first Matilda and Mary got the shaft. Being women they inherited no property.

"Dear Mr. President, Why are you still screwing us over?"

1884 deed-keeping it in the family

This easier to read deed documents Samuel A. Duff Jr. selling two acres to his brother William for $3000.Women are making great strides by this time as Sam's wife is actually mentioned at length in the deed. It states that Matilda is of full age, examined separately from her husband, that the contents of the deed is fully known to her, and that she has signed off of her own free will.  How progressive-score one for women's rights.

1896 deed-repo man

William Duff doesn't own this property for long. (I guess 12 years is a long time, I'm just being dramatic)  On September 11, 1896 he is sued for unpaid debts and gets his land repossessed by the sheriff. He owes $2307.20 to the villainous sounding Abner Bedell.

Mr. Bedell's favorite pastime 

What happened to William Duff? Was he a drunk? Did he sustain an injury and was unable to support himself? Did he gamble all his money away? The deed doesn't provide details but guess who buys the land from the county?

His brother Sam, of course!

September 11th, just a crappy day all around.

Sam purchases the land back into his family for $4000. He must have been pretty pissed, losing $1000. in the deal. The circumstances of the repossession and the dynamics of these two brothers really intrigue me. What happened to William? Did Samuel let him live on the land out of pity?

The Graham family property deeds

1903 deed-sisters are doing it for themselves
In 1903 Sam A. Duff Jr gets over the sentimentality of keeping the land in the family and a sells the plot  for $6000. to Christina Graham- all by herself!  This deed mentions the land being referenced in the "Samuel A. Duff's garden plan of lots" A neighbor of mine in his 80s mentioned the Sam Duff Gardens, and we have since learned Sam A Duff was responsible for partitioning out the land and essentially creating the suburb where the house now sits.  

I'm not sure what's done on modern deeds, but all of these deeds describe the land being transferred by long winded sentences like "thence along the line of the Johnston lands south 33 30' west, one hundred ten and fifty nine hundredths to a point in the said line........" Total acres are not always mentioned.

This deed mentions the land of Ms. Mary Duff as a property marker. Mary is the name of one of Sam A Duff's children. I did a quick search on the history of women's rights in this country, and like other civil rights issues, most rights were granted on a state by state basis before national laws were passed.

1935 deed-What a bargain!

The 1903 deed implies Christina Graham was an independent new century suffragette type who bought her property as a single lady. However Graham is actually her married name, although her husband is not at all mentioned in the 1903 document. By 1935 she lightens up and she and her husband William F. (a manager of the Pine lumber company) sell their property to their son William Davis Graham and his wife Pauline for one dollar.

Were Christina and her husband estranged?  Did she move out of another house they shared and bought our house on her own? Either way, this 1935 deed is the first one to take advantage of a typewriter, for which I was extremely relieved.

The 1930 census has William Davis at 27 years old, single, and still living at home with mom and dad. He's listed as a lawyer working in private practice, so either he has a problem saving money, really gets along with his parents or is coddled by his them. Five years later his parents can't take it anymore and just give him the house.

Here is a graduation photo of William Davis Graham from 1922. 

That caption is pretty racy, especially for 1922!

I'm stopping deed information for now, the next deed starts more modern history, and I'm unsure about writing about people who may still be living without their permission. 

 Just how old is our house, anyway?

Our house is listed as being built in 1900, a convenient round number that is probably incorrect. I was told by a neighbor that in many cases 1900 was just an estimated date, assigned when the county decided to actually access of all the real estate in its jurisdiction.

This map is from 1890, and William Duff is marked as the owner, before he lost his property to debt. I don't know how accurately the shapes drawn represent the structure on the land, but this may be our house, and hopefully not a house built before ours.

Here is a map showing lots of the Samuel Duff Gardens from 1897. This diagram represents the shape of our house pretty accurately,except for that curve at the top of the map, which I imagine was a fantastic domed solarium.....

Many of you reading this wish that Samuel Duff was a wealthy beer baron, and that this guy inspired the Simpsons cartoon. Unfortunately this is not the case, as Sam Duff II owned an ice plant. That would be a funny addendum to our story. Oh well!

Our trip to the cemetery

Through findagrave.com we found the cemetery where William and Christina Graham are buried, the couple who lived in the house from 1903 to 1935, about 15 minutes away from our house. Here are some noteworthy graves found during our search. These people have nothing to do with our house, I just liked their names and/or gravestones.

The one employee at the cemetery was unable to help us without previous notice, so we decided to just sniff around the general area until we found them. William and Christina's gravestone had two slivers of slate underneath it.  Pete thought of the slate we found in the house that was a part of the original roof, although it could have any significance for the person who left it there. I know it was a total long shot and kind of improper, but I wrote a short note and placed it under the gravestone, asking any visitors to contact us and share information.

The slate can be seen, with my note tucked underneath.

One odd coincidence was that there was a Samuel Duff buried next to the Grahams about ten feet away. We were hoping this was one of our Samuel Duffs, but the dates and middle initial don't match up to any of them.

During our search we found a gaggle of Duffs in several locations, which I guess shouldn't have surprised me being that there were so many of them in our town in the 19th century. I am tempted to work on their family tree, but this would be a huge impractical undertaking. Here are the Duffs we think are relatives of the two Sams.

            Possible descendants of Sam Duff I, the Irish immigrant

This may be the William Duff that lost his property to debt and his wife.

In a perfect world I'd like to track down their descendants to see if anyone knows stories about them losing the house. Being familiar with the strong Duff stock these two probably had 15 children.

We saw a woman visiting near one of the Duff clusters, so I asked her if she was there visiting any of their graves. She wasn't, but had a lot of memories of her mother talking about prominent Duffs in the community.

May 2015

Yes, yes, I know its been awhile. Here it is:

The back porch

On this trip we conquered the back porch, the (hopefully) most screwy room in the house. I arrived a few days after Pete. He got a head start and left this pile of debris for me to load in the dumpster.

This is all from the back porch area. It's a major accomplishment ripping through 100 plus years of shoddy upgrades.  It's silly, but I feel like it's a big milestone.  

The room really does look bigger with all the layers peeled away! That out of focus-ness is actually the dust. 

On every trip we find something unusual, and this trip was no exception. Under the floor in the back porch is a pit. It's about 7 feet deep (it may be deeper, we didn't shovel it out)  It's lined with what looks like 18 inch thick bricks chiseled from bedrock.

It's got a pipe cemented into it, but the pipe isn't attached to anything.  It may be a dry well, built to collect storm water runoff, but to the layman's eye it looks like something built by serial killer. Whatever it is, we plan to build a trap door on top of it. It seems like a natural home for our plastic skeleton, or unwanted salesmen.

The Kitchen

After conquering the back porch we moved on to the kitchen, where Pete spent three days pulling off a club sandwich of sheetrock, cement board and steel wire mesh.

I would imagine this is how exterior walls of banks are reinforced.

 First he tried the reciprocating saw, which smoothed out the blades after one pass.

 Pete's friend refers to this as butter knifing.

A masonry circular saw blade did the trick, but it still took forever.

Another signature was found under the kitchen drop ceiling.

Suspicious slab

I found this concrete slab under some foliage that I cleared away. Its way too heavy to be lifted by hand, so we will have to get a jackhammer or earthmover to reveal what's underneath. 

Noteworthy debris

I finally tackled the rest of the pantry, an area I was ignoring for a while. We found these gems inside:

I had no idea anyone poured corn syrup directly on their pancakes! I thought corn syrup was only an ingredient to be added to food to encourage diabetes and obesity. It should be a schedule one drug, not something you can buy at the grocery store!

Why does one man need this huge can of vanilla pudding? I don't know what anyone would "use" this for besides eating. The thought of it makes me very uncomfortable.

I remember the name Galloping Gourmet from childhood, but had to look it up. This thing is the top of a small convection oven marketed by TV chef Graham Kerr.

I don't expect anyone to sit through this entire clip, but watching a proper Brit actually slurp when talking about rump pot roast at :20 is pretty funny. I thought the "galloping" in his name has something to do with a horse meat dish, but after watching him jump over furniture on set it's pretty obvious.  I guess he gets sauced before the show (wine glass in hand) or he just wants everyone to think he's drunk.

Flanagan Krrrisp KRAUT update

I failed to throw away a can of rotten sauerkraut after anthropomorphizing it in a previous blog entry. 

I found our prize fighter with some serious blunt force head trauma and subdural swelling. The cerebrovinegar fluid was not drained in time. Rest in peace Flanagan, you put up a good fight.

This astounding piece of both representational art (the print itself) and abstract art (the termites eating through it) is a true collaborative masterpiece of both man and insect.  We had a termite treatment last summer, so all the itty bitty artists were long gone, further proof that most artists only get recognition after they are dead.

Flora and Fauna

Whoa, irises are like the cockroaches of the plant world. We had the house treated for termites last July. That involved the workers digging a moat around the entire perimeter of the house and filling it with gallons of chemicals. When I first saw these flowers I thought we got ripped off, that they just filled the spaces with water, but we haven't seen any termite activity since the treatment.

Our special guest

This is Buddha, he belongs to our host Amanda. She went out of town for a few days so we took care of this big guy, we brought him to our house to enjoy the grass.  He's a really sweet gentle dog, but his bark is absolutely terrifying. Its the canine equivalent of a cocking a shotgun. You dont have to use your weapon, just the sound will make an intruder crap their pants.  

There was a cat hiding under the dumpster when the service came to pick it up. The poor thing bolted when the unit was tipped onto the truck. Ill be sure to bang on it next time, I don't want to see anyone get squished!

Recent acquisitions

 I saw this trashy Harley Davidson tool belt on Craigslist for free. What the hell, I'll save some cash and not buy one at Home Depot. After picking it up I got this email from its previous owner:

Hi Stephanie,

I have a question, although I don't want you to feel obligated to answer it, by any means.  Why do you want the tool belt?  I kept a lot of stuff I got when I had a Harley, but have been slowly been giving it away.  So far, the only things I regret getting rid of are my Harley t-shirts.  I got at least one every time I visited another city, even if I was just passing through.  The fact is I outgrew them, otherwise I would be wearing them still.  One thing I will never give away is my leather Harley jacket.  It is too classy and too beautiful to get rid of.  I wear it even when I am riding my BMW, which you know is a grievous no-no if you are familiar with biker culture.

Flea market finds

We went to two outdoor flea markets. The sun beating down on me was awful, but I endured. We got this random stuff:

Antique door knob back plate  $5.

Pete got this set of girly playing cards. "Score" has a double meaning with these cards. $10.

  The horse on the top sold me on this glass Heinz horseradish bowl. According to Wikipedia, horseradish is poisonous to horses. (?)  $10.

Pete doesn't know it yet but he will be sanding and repainting this old mixer/juicer for me. Thanks in advance, Boo.  $20.

 I was on the fence with this chair, so the seller kept lowering the price. According to Amanda, the best time for flea market deals is really early or at the end of the day. Those wooden wheels will destroy any wood floor, so they eventually need to be removed.  $25.

These are from a scrapbook of playing cards that someone took great care to organize. The movie Hunters and Gatherers from 1994 is a fantastic documentary about obsessive collectors, and this book should be featured in the sequel. The slits in the scrapbook paper are hand cut; that's commitment! $6.




Restore SCORE!

We got these fantastic cast iron pieces from the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store. The sales lady was bursting at the seams when she told us that the store acquired them by accident. Pete is gonna weld together a trellis that looks something like this:

Now we need that player piano

The next dumb decadent piece of furniture we can get for this too large house is a player piano. I see them on Craigslist all the time. We mentioned this to our next door neighbor, who has two pianos in his house and wants a third. Unlike us poseurs he actually plays, and treated us to a ten minute medley of Elton John and Bette Midler classics before giving us these player piano scrolls. 

"I'm not very good" he said modestly before banging out his rendition. I told him he's the pool hustler of piano playing. 

Industrial recycling

The militant recycler in me was thrilled to see the recycling drop off facility five minutes from our house. There were several old tires kicking around in the yard that we finally got around to dropping off there. They recycle lots of old crap,  including :

Paints and chemicals

Idiot boxes and computers