I was noticed a lot of us homesteaders have built or are in the process of building their own houses. Has anyone thought of starting a home journal?

My best friend Barbara has this 120 year old house and I always wonder how many familys have lived there. How many children and amimals. Anyway it sure would have been fun if each family had jotted down a few interesting tidbits in a jurnal book before they moved on so the history of the house would'nt be lost.

I hope my little rock house stands for centuries so I'm thinking of doing it hoping that the people who live there in the future will continue to add to it.

What do you think, would people find a home journal interesting or toss it out the minute they moved in? Waste of time?....Kirk

-- Anonymous, July 01, 2001

Answers

Kirk, Wow, I sure do wish that a home journal had come with my house. This house is very old too, actually beneath the wood siding there is a log cabin! In the basement we can look up and see the log beams supporting it and we drilled a hole in the wall up in one of the closets just so's we could see the logs! For some reason our house looks much bigger from the outside then it does inside. My brother once laughed and said that it was because the walls are so thick.

I often wonder about the people who used to live here and what it was like when this was a lone log cabin on the hill. I really wonder about the lady named Mrs. Flowers who loved flowers as much as I do, she planted so much here that I still enjoy. The huge old Lilacs,the tree Peonys and the snowball bushes to name a few. I sure wish she could come down from heaven and visit me for a spell in her old gardens. Sometimes we laugh and say that she is still here planting things around when a strange flower comes up in a strange place, where we didnt plant any!

I do think that perhaps she does still have some influence on this place because it wasn't untill we moved here that I started loving a particular shade of blue, I started painting this blue here and there, then one day we were getting ready to paint the house and were chipping paint off of the window frames, and guess what shade of blue we found under the more resent addition of white. Yep, the same blue that I had been splattering around used to be a trim on the windows.! It gave me a shiver, but a good one. I hope she likes me, sure she does, after all we have so much in common, and she probably knows that I won't be chopping down any of her beloved flowers!

I think that a home journal is a terrific idea!

You go Kirk! Your great! TRen

-- Anonymous, July 01, 2001

Kirk, good Idea, I love the blue flowers answer. I thought of a song I heard years ago, I think It was called this old house, something about a grandfathers clock never to tick again when the old man died.Does any one remember it. We live in a old house, and we have been working on it for 18 years, A bathroom use to be a kitchen, after we peeled off layers of wall paper, we found red and green cups and saucers wall paper with some kind of web backing.We found hard plank floors under several layers of tile and linoleum. We had a great time bringing this house back to life, and I wonder some times about all the people who lived here.There"s a old cemetary down the road, that has tomb stones before the civil war. And there is a stage coach stop, that the old hand dug well is still there. Its a shame that all is lost,and that it wasn"t written down.Love Irene

-- Anonymous, July 01, 2001

Irene,

That song was called "When the old man Died". I used to plan it on the piano. I remember a couple of the lines of the chorus.

"Forty years without slumbering (tick-tock, tick-tock) ??????????????????????????? (tick-tock, tick-tock) But the clock stopped never to run again when the old man died."

The gist was every day the old man would wind the clock but it stopped at the moment the old man died.

Anybody else out there that remembers this????? Please chime in cuz it's driving me crazy.

-- Anonymous, July 01, 2001

Kirk, here is a blessing for your wonderful house which you built with your own two hands, from Home Blessing, elizabeth Barr Haas

To Families Large and Small

God, let this house be something more

Than a shelter with four corners

Standing against the four winds of the earth;

Let it be more than windows, more than doors,

More than a hearth to keep us warm.

Give it a soul! The soul of home

That reaches out beyond the walls

And ,through the hearts it nurtures here

Sheds something of its own kindliness

Upon its era and its time.

God, let this house be something more

Than stout rafters and strong roof;

Let it be more than any of its parts,

And more than any single one of us

Who shall forever call it home.

May something of its mellowness and strength,

Ingrained within the structure of its sons,

Diffuse a lengthening glow upon humanity

Throughout all the years to come.

-- Anonymous, July 01, 2001

The home I grew up in Massachusetts is over 200 years old. In the attic of the home someone wrote on the rafters sort of a journal, they recorded births, deaths, a hurricane and other events. The best I can remember it covered about 50 -60 years in 1800's to the early 1900's. The home has been converted into a 3 family apartment building, I often wonder if the writings were preserved.

-- Anonymous, July 01, 2001

Dianne in Mass- Hey its a rainy day and I had my poetry books open so I looked up your song, here goes.

Grandfather's Clock

My Grandfathers clock was too large for the shelf. So it stood ninty years on the floor. It was taller by half than the old man himself, tho' it weighed not a penny weight more. It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born, and was always his treasure and pride. But it stopp'd short never to go again, when the old man died.Ninty years without slumbering. tick tock tick tock. His life seconds numbering, tick tock tick tock. It stopp'd short never to go again when the old man died. by Henry Clark Work

-- Anonymous, July 01, 2001

Thanks, Tren,

I just knew someone out there would be able to finish that off for me. Nice ole song, huh? Ninety years, not forty. That makes more sense.

Thanks so much. Now I'll at least be singing the correct words instead of making them up as I go along.

-- Anonymous, July 01, 2001

I have always maintained journals on our homes as a way of knowing maintenance repairs and furnishing inventory. I was lucky enpough to find two manilla envelopes in our bathroom closet that contained repair reciepts from the previous two owners that cover some 40 years of repair history. Aparently the first owner thought to journal the repairs on the back of the tickets and the next one followed suit and did it the same way. I keep my journal with those old reciepts in a fireproof file box now, but store it in the same closet where I found the envelopes.

-- Anonymous, July 01, 2001

I would like to think that my house will be standing right here a hundred years or more into the future. My husband and I along with my father-in-law, who has sinced passed on, built our home from scratch. It is a log home and we painstakingly drilled every of the spike holes 18" apart and pounded 14" spikes into them. Then of course there were the tons (seems like it!) of insulation strips between each log and gallons of caulking!! I have pictures of it as we put it together, but no written journal. Years ago I came across a poem in a magazine (no author) that I am now putting into cross-stitch which I hope to hand down to my granddaughter, along with my log house: "There's a house whose rooms I know by heart, where I tended the garden and read my books, where dreams were dreamt and memories made, where children grew up and I grew old. There's a house where life was lived, a home where I belong!"

-- Anonymous, July 01, 2001

Great idea, Kirk. I'll do it. The house I'm working on starts with an old hewn log house moved here from about 4 miles away. In taking it down, I discovered that the logs were not all the same age (different weathering) - so at least some were re-used from an earlier structure. Of course I wish those logs could talk. Or that the people who lived there had left a journal....

-- Anonymous, July 01, 2001

Thank You all!! Got the 1st page blessing in the journal (Thanks Tren). Puttin in the careful list of supplies and cost. Building dates and a couple of pictures. Hmmmm what else?.....Kirk

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

Details on how you made the rock walls?

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

Thats right! Given that its not had permits I should detail wall construction. Thank you Joy!!!!

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

How about notes about people who visit and help while you are building?? The hours you have put into it and anything unusual about where the stones come from??? Those little interesting facts would be fun for someone to read years down the road. This sounds like a wonderful idea to me. I have letters written by my great-great-great- grandmother about homesteading and the building of their home. Such a treasure.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001

Wow Diane those letters really are treasures. I have a picture of the house my great grandfather built in 1890 but I wish I had something written....Kirk...P.S. Nobody has helped build me at all. I want to see if I can build it all alone. Sorta dumb huh?

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

Kirk, why would it be dumb to want to do something all by yourself??? It sounds like something I would do and I think it is just fine.........then perhaps I am dumb?? I like to look at something and be able to say to myself, I did that. Some people are group workers and some are not. I am not.

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

Kirk, you must be one of those people with the gift of forethought. I think a journal is a great idea, and anyone who's ever loved a house that has character would love to know more about it's history. We sometimes put "treasures" and scribings in the walls and woodwork when we work on a building. They will remain hidden until the next person opens them up.

Sometimes the deeds, titles, etc of older houses have information about previous owners and transfers. If you can trace their families or friends you can find out more of the history of your house.

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

David: Barb's old house is really really old! Built with those square nails. Its single wall construction. No 2/4s. The front door has a real low knob because the Cornish miners were small people. Recently I found where they had the old outhouse and found a perfect old pottery ginger beer bottle! If I could just get Barb out of here for a while I could dig up the yard!! Ha! Yes I really wish I could go back in time and see who was here!....Kirk

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Kirk -

What a wonderful idea!!! I'm not sure anybody will be interested in the history of the house I want to build, but as a history buff, I would LOVE it if someone wrote something like that!! I can't imagine something being more interesting to me, personally, than reading what real people did in a real home - especially through several generations or several owners...

OK - so I'm not normal. But, I still LOVE your idea!!!

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001