I think it depends on where your house is. There are some city directories (with addresses in some directories) online at Ancestry, but it is more geared to focusing on human history than on old house history. As noted above the best source of accurate ownership history data is usually in your county or city deed record repository. There may be some states where the info may not be publicly available (Texas?), but in all other areas, that's where the mother-lode of data is. Although it may seem very confusing to search, at least at first, there is generally a pretty comprehensible organization to the files and often the office staff will be willing to give you a quick course. In most offices they will not do the searches for you, just show you how to use the data-bases and old ledger systems. Most areas only have computerized records going back a few years or decades. Anything older than that has to be located by using the grantor/grantee indices, then the individual deeds looked up in the ancient files. (Suggestion: plan on it taking way more time than you expect and wear easily-washed old clothes since the old records are often very dusty, or affected with red leather rot.) There is a very good book on "chaining" titles (doing a house history in general). I am away from home, but I can look it up for you if you'd like. There are different deed index systems around the country, but the principles are the same. The grantOR is the party selling the property and the grantEE is the one buying it. Most deeds (esp. early ones) are stuffed to the gills with long, seemingly repetitive words and have hefty boiler-plate preambles and closes. You'll quickly learn to focus on the main points: who, what, where, when, and how much - paid and number of acres sold. The Grantor (seller) is always the party of the FIRST part and the Grantee (buyer) is always the party of the SECOND part. There can be more than one person in any of these roles. And there can be more than one individual deed when there is more than one person in either of these roles, but especially when there are multiple sellers who for various reasons couldn't (wouldn't?) be gotten together to sign a single document. Some sellers only hold a certain percentage of the whole interest (e.g. if two brothers inherited property per stirpes, or equal shares, then each could only convey a half-interest; multiple generational heirs sometimes have tiny and uneven fractions of interest to convey.) When that happens it's not uncommon to find multiple partial deeds filed over long periods, many executed in far away places. There's another useful stream of info relating to any mortgages on the property, who gave them (generally the buyer, but could be someone who already owned the property, like the common HELOC of today) and who took them, i.e. the lender. (Don't be confused by the modern concept that you "get" a mortgage from a bank. It's always been, and still is, true that though the bank gives you the money, what is really happening in that case is that you really are giving/granting the bank an interest in the title of what you own in exchange for that money. That's why the borrower is the grantor in mortage matters. See also: Great Mortgage Meltdown 2009-2010.) That can be confusing because in the case of a purchase money mortgage the grantor of the mortgage is the buyer who is simultaneously the grantee in the deed transaction. Confused yet? Well, think about when the transaction involves a buyer and seller who are also entering into a loan agreement to cover the purchase price. In that case the "grantor" and "grantee" roles are both doubled, and reversed. You asked about the census records: in most cases they are not very searchable by address, which often is just a secondary census data category, and often in older areas the street or place names will have changed over time, rendering the search moot anyway. It may be better in well-developed cities with tighter control of space, but in rural or thinly settled areas addresses, at least as we use them today, were much more fungible. And many rural areas -like mine for instance in upstate NY - only got "real" street numbers as recently in the late 1990s when the 911 address systems came into vogue. Before that whatever address this farm may have had was geographical (west side of such and such road, beyond the old XXX place) or the rural delivery route (not street) box number. All that being said, I do use Ancestry quite a bit in my long-running research project on the farms in my town. But only to expand (or resolve confusing ownership history) by sussing out who the named buyers and sellers were - and with what relationship to each other, if any, - after I've pulled those names from the county deed (or probate) records. And there, census data (especially after the mid 1800's when realtionships began to be noted within households) is invaluable. Unfortunately there is a big gap in 1890, because those census documents were mostly destroyed for that year. Some states also did a census, especially in rural or farm areas, on fith year intervals, so that may be another source, usually held within the state records. I'd start with a simple buyer to seller search, working backward. If you get balked, remember each seller was also, once, a buyer. So if you can't find a particular person in one role, then look for him or her in the other role. This is helped by the fact that most deed books are arranged by role, in addition to name and/or period of time. This holds true unless a buyer later died owning the property, then the heirs would be sellers. That's generally where things get a bit sticky. Who were the heirs and what names did they, or their agents, use in the transaction as conveyors, grantors or sellers? Ancestry can help at this point by helping you figure out the decendents' names. And you can also get some of that info by checking the probate files where wills and estate dispositions are recorded. In many states you are entitled to see those records even if you're not an heir. I used to be shy about even asking that, but the clerks never batted an eye when I finally gathered my courage up to ask. In some areas, really old deed records have been transferred to the local historical society, which in my experience makes them somewhat less accessible than city or county clerks' offices which are open during most busines hours. Occasionally you'll find a deed room that's open in the evening, and often those hours are full of people doing exactly what you are. If you ask for help at those times, you'll almost certainly get a good steer to where (and how) to search. After you have some names, then I would take up Ancestry's try it for free for 30 days offer and see if you think it will be useful. For deed chain searching here in the US, you most likely won't need to purchase the expanded European records, so you can skip that extra fee, for now. Fair warning: this stuff is really addictive. If you get hooked, you'll have to give up your other hobbies. One other thing: if you find that purchase price info is not noted, that's not uncommon. Sometimes the deeds are coy about it. Look for tax stamp data on those deeds. Taxes were often based on the amount of money being paid. If that's the case, and you can find the tax rate, then you can figure back to purchase price. Have fun, and good luck!

You just need your best guesstimate as to the year of each of those facts. The oath you take before you sign includes "to the best of my knowledge and belief". In training, they explained that your guess is acceptable. See ya' Monday!

Lov_mkitchen complains, "In other trees I have found my information turned into an ancestry file.....what do they call them.......family data or something like that. And passed off as a shaky leaf when in fact it is not a documented fact at all. A family cemetery I did for findagrave, out in the middle of a farm field turned into Iowa Cemetery Index. My word only that those people were buried there and the facts I supplied were correct. How's that for a source! I had a person who I suspected died in a certain place at a certain time that I put as a fact with the disclaimer of "as much as I know now" that turned into an ancestry hint complete with her personal information. Anyone finding that would assume it was correct. ancestry has turned into a big hat with all sorts of bits and pieces thrown in. Stick your hand in, pull a fact out, add it to your tree. No research needed." From the Ancestry.com web site: "The Shaky Leafs are Ancestry Hints designed to aid you in your family history research. They provide other records in our database that could possibly match the individual in your tree. These hints are automatically generated, and are there for you to determine whether or not the record hint matches the individual in your tree." [emphasis in original] If you, Lov_mkitchen, see a Shaky Leaf and take it as documented fact, that's YOUR problem. If other people see a Shaky Leaf and take it as documented fact, that's THEIR problem. Some of us are not willing to accept everything that's out there as documented fact. I never, ever, accept anything on anyone else's tree as documented fact unless and until I see the documentation for myself. Then, and only then, will I add it to my tree. I have well over 5,000 people on my tree. Not nearly as many as some, but many more than others. And every single name has been researched and verified before being added. You've also said, "I'm helping them to the point that I have made information available that wasn't on the site previously." And you have undoubtedly gotten a lot of information from Ancestry.com that wouldn't have been easily (if at all) available to you otherwise. Genealogy research is a give-and-take proposition. We take a lot more than we give (that's the nature of our research, after all), so we (YOU) really should stop complaining about other people taking our information when we post it to a public web site.

My mother's parent's both immigrated from Italy - small villages in the Italian Alps not far from the Swiss border. My mother's parents also immigrated from northern Italy, Piemonte to be be more exact -- one from a small village north of Torino, and one from a small city (they met in Los Angeles). I made contact with her father's family, or rather a cousin in Torino searched and found us in California. I visited, and went with my cousin to see where the family originated. We went to the municipio, and for a few centesimi, obtained a copy of my grandfather's birth certificate. They still had huge ledgers with handwritten entries for births going back centuries -- the small number of people living there probably made storage of the ledgers possible. My father's father returned to his town in Toscana in his last years; I visited his grave so I have his date of death. I wrote the province and asked for information on his birth and death certificates, and surprisingly received an answer. I qualify to apply for Italian citizenship based on my father's father, or at least I did the last I checked, but other circumstances tossed a roadblock and long detour in my path. With the current rise of the Italian far right, I'm not sure I want to take the chance of reliving the days of fascists brawling in the streets.