Researching an Old House: The Quest for Answers

"To truly preserve history, you have to know the history. To know the history, you have to read the history. You can clean up an old house or building and call it preserved but without the knowledge of the past, you've done nothing but fix an old building." -- Me

In the quest for information about an old house, you are often left with more questions than answers. Some may be easily answered with a little digging, and others may require spending hours on end reading hand-written documents from hundreds of years ago. I found the latter out the hard way.

Last Friday, I finally got my opportunity to go to the Pittysylvania County Courthouse to research Ms. Gott's house. There, I was certain, would be a deed mentioning the selling of that particular parcel or more importantly, the selling of the land with a dwelling. After two and a half hours, I uncovered nothing more than a handful of documents referencing deeds that were recording in the Danville Courthouse. Deeds did exist in the county deed books, luckily, but most mentioned that a more detailed reference could be found in Danville. I didn't walk away entirely empty handed, though. I was left with the location of a map, a vague story about how the area was subdivided, and a name: W. P. Robinson. It wasn't what I had hoped, though.

So, rather dejectedly, I closed the windows and sunroof on my car, and then got into Mr. Gott's truck and headed back into Danville. The next three and a half hours would lead me to some marginally useful information that may hold the key to unlocking the history of 275 Carolina Avenue.