Suddenly, the House Has a History!

When we started looking for a home, it was my hope that it would be a "house with a history". At the time I just meant something with some charm and personality. We were lucky to find a house on the west side of the Twin Cities older than 1950 - the house was stated to have been built in 1901 on the official documents.
There wasn't much chance of finding out much about the original family. Records were spotty, and most of the houses around us were built in the 1980's so not much chance of local family records.

Then my husband called me after a day of painting at the house. The contractor had thrown a bunch of papers next to the sink from drawers in preparation for painting cabinets. One of them was an envelope marked "History of this house by a relative".

Inside were a collection of notes and letters written by the granddaughter of the original owners to the previous owner in 2009. They have information about the original family and the changes to the layout of the farmhouse and outbuildings over the years.

Using the information in the letters, I could track down a lot more history about the house than we could have ever had otherwise!

The original owners were Albert and Clara Schmidt. They had five children, four daughters and a son, Elmer. Elmer took over the farm when he married, and he and his wife ran the farm as truck farmers. His wife, Gertrude, eventually sold the farm maybe sometime in the 1950s, to a woman who restored much of the farmhouse. The family still owned some of the surrounding land, but they started selling off plots about the same time.

Clara is the woman seated on the far right. This is a picture of her with her natal family (it appears to be only siblings.)

The house is almost certainly older than we thought, but it's unclear exactly how old. The granddaughter says it was built in the early 1890s, but the other notes say approximately 1875.

It certainly involved many more outbuildings than exist today! The only remaining outbuilding is the wash house/ice house that was converted into what we now have as the guest house.

I found some aerial photos that show the recent transition of the area from rural to suburban.

1960

1971

I didn't find aerial photos in the database for later than 1971, but an historical map from 1985 shows the area completely covered in new builds.

The part of the letters I found super interesting was the original layout of the house.
The floors in what is now the dining room, living room, and library are original.
What we are now using as a library had been a downstairs bedroom for the previous owners, and was originally a parlor used just for visitors.

We have since taken down the giant sliding mirror doors (they were likely added during the 1980s renovation), but the floors and likely the light fixture are original. At some point we will be adding lots and lots of bookshelves in here to become the library.

Just off the dining room is what is currently set up as a laundry, but that was the main bedroom originally.

Our living room was the kitchen! Where is now a sandstone fireplace, was a four burner wood stove and a red handled water pump. The current kitchen was put in in the 1950s and remodeled in the 1980s (which explains the surprise asbestos floor and 80s wallpaper in there).

Suddenly it makes sense why the floors in here aren't as fancy as the ones in the adjoining two rooms.

We still have original doors leading out to what is now the garage and just for show upstairs. The letters say there used to be decks from those doors, which would probably have been lovely with the lake right there and no surrounding houses back in the day.

The door to the old upstairs deck is straight ahead. The whole upstairs hallway and stairwell have barn wood on the walls. I don't know if this wood came from the old barn, that was next door, or someone else's barn. You can still seem some of the red paint on it!

I'm hoping to find some more old photographs, maps, and other history pieces to the house. As we have renovated we've found some treasures, like cast iron light switch covers and an old horse shoe in the cellar, that I intend to save as part of  the home's history.

It's been a treat to know more about this place we intend to call home!