An Ongoing Correspondence

So a few weeks ago, I started, armed with a small clipping my friend Ursula had found in the NY Times on how to research the history of ”your” house, I embarked on what I assumed would be a hastily dispatched chore. I looked at the warnings of the difficulties in really coming up with concrete information with a sort of lofty distain; I, of course would use my intuitive research skills and cut through the drudgery in record time and, well, just get on with it.

And so I did, at least, start. Frankly, owing nothing to a single ability I possess, the most important fragment of information came right at the beginning of the process from the Vedder Research Library (for Greene County history. Reggie and I dashed up there for one of the rare open library moments and while trying to decide how to plunge into the task, we stood staring at a map of Greene County of about 1881 or so, and realized that it showed what we were pretty sure was our house with the horse-shoe drive and indications of another drive around the back of the house for deliveries. And there was a name on the house: George Griffin. Considering there were very few names of actual people on that map, this seemed terribly impressive and from there, I was sure that all we had to do was find George and home free!

Then, the most amazing thing was that upon scanning a copy of the Beer’s “History of Greene County”, in the Athens history part, suddenly the name of George Griffin popped up again, but this time referencing not only the previous owner who sold it to him, but the owner before, who, it stated, was a “very prominent man of his day”; Joseph Groom. A definite tingle-all-over moment! But the tingle will have to do until I get more time to do the forging ahead some more stuff.