Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 11, November 2003

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

Researching my family home at 1501 North 44th Street

By JAMES BUSH

Having heard much about Seattle's impressive research archives, I decided to take a one-week plunge into my own family history.

In the 1940s and 1950s, my grandparents, Hugh T. and Anne O. Gibbons, owned a home at 1501 N 44th St. Sitting in the shadow of Lincoln High School, the house and the block it sat on gave way to a Lincoln expansion project around 1958. I knew the structure: a papercut rendition of that house (created by my uncle, Richard Gibbons) hung on the wall of my parents' Cleveland bedroom for many years as an icon of my mother's Seattle roots.

The first stop of any Seattle home history hunter is the Washington State Archives (the Puget Sound Branch is located at Bellevue Community College, 425-564-3940). The King County property record cards stored here contain a ton of information, including who owned a home, how much property tax they paid, and what modifications they made to the structure. There are also photos of most homes taken in 1937 as part of a Works Progress Administration project and in 1959-61 as part of a county inventory. Arrive armed with the home's tax lot (parcel) number or a short legal description of the lot (mine was Lake Union Addition, Block 6, Lot 1).

Next, given my assumption that my grandparents had sold their house to the Seattle School District, I visited the district archives (206-252-0795), a sprawling collection of items ranging from School Board meeting minutes to yearbooks, student newspapers, and historic photos.

Lastly, I checked out the Recorder's Office at the King County Records, Elections, and Licensing Services Division (206-296-1570). Among the items stored there are records of all property sales in King County. To search, you need to know the calendar year of the sale and the name of either purchaser or seller.

Family history is not always accurate. For starters, the evidence shows that my grandparents didn't wait around for the School District bulldozers. They sold the house at 1501 N 44th St. on June 1, 1956 for $9,000 to a laborer named John P. Thorliefson. Destined not to remain a laborer for long, Thorliefson sold the home to the district less than a year later (May 2, 1957) for $11,000.

The surprising fact was that the house was not demolished at that time. The district accepted salvage bids for all the displaced homes; William Imhoff's bid of $153 won him the house. In fact, King County property records indicate that the home was moved an incredible distance all the way to 19041 15th Ave. NE. However, any excitement over the possibility that the old family homestead was still intact lasted only until I looked at the 1961 photo of the 15th Avenue home it was clearly not the same structure.

Deciphering the notations on the property card with the help of an archivist, I got this sad story: my grandparents' former house was moved to the site in 1958, then demolished in early 1960 and replaced with a home moved from the path of Interstate 5 (freeway construction meant that cheap, movable homes were easily available at the time). One possibility is that my grandparents' former home was damaged in transitor that the owner just found a $153 house he liked better.

But I came away from the hunt with lots of new documentation for the family history file, including a few fascinating facts I'd never have learned otherwise. (According to the 1951 Polk city directory, my uncle Turk Gibbons was employed as a "helper" at the Northwest Bolt & Nut Co. I have no doubt his siblings were very supportive of this career move.)

History research also gives you the opportunity for numerous little victories. It was a thrill just to spot the signatures of my grandparents on their home sale documents after sorting through pages of microfilmed records.

There's a lot of history out there if you know where to look.