And someday there’ll be apples there

When we started to look for a house and property one thing we wanted were apple trees. We looked at several that had existing apple trees, but the house was not a good fit. Since we would live in the house, we decided that apple trees shouldn’t be a deciding factor. Where we settled does not have any apple trees, at least anymore. A flyover photo taken in the 1940s you can see where the orchard was. So, we just have to get some planted!

Us picking Northern Spy Apples at an orchard. 

First step was to decide where to get the trees. We knew we wanted heirloom varieties and the sooner we could get them producing the better! We could get one of the varieties we knew we wanted through a county agency. However, they could take 10 years to produce and we would still need to get another variety elsewhere. After lots of Googling we found Trees of Antiquity. We could get our heirloom apple trees and they should start producing in 2-4 years.

Now which apples did we pick!

Northern Spy
From the start, this has been on the list. Why? Well, most importantly we like how they taste. Next, I found a reference that these were very common in Michigan at one time. One source said that if someone says they have an old apple tree on their farm, it is a safe bet it would be a Northern Spy. This is also an all around good apple. Meaning it is good for eating fresh, baking, applesauce, cider, and storage. Last, we wanted it to be a pre-1860s variety. Here is an excerpt from Trees of Antiquity site “An 1847 letter from Oliver Chapin, writes "the first Northern Spy apple trees were raised from seeds brought from the Northwest part of Connecticut, about the year 1800, by Elijah Taylor.

Northern Spy 

Northern Spy does need a partner variety that can cross-pollinate so what to pick? We turned to an expert. We asked for recommendations with the following criteria: existing in Michigan during the 1860s, pollinates with Northern Spy, and is a good cider apple. We know many cider apple varieties saw their demise in the Untied States during prohibition. We like the idea of helping in a small way to bring those back. Looking over the recommendations here is what we will be harvesting.


Snow Fameuse
Also can be known as a Snow or Snow Apple because of its snow white colored flesh. It is a parent of the loved McIntosh. This is another variety that is great for eating and making cider. It is supposed to also make a “fluffy” applesauce! It came from French settlements in Quebec way back in the 1600’s! It then spread over the next 100+ years in every direction for 1,000 miles in Canada and United States.

Snow Fameuse, Snow, or Snow Apple 

Newtown Pippin
Three varieties of apples seemed like a good number to settle on! Newtown Pippin’s story started in 1750 and is said to be the oldest commercially grown and bred variety in the United States. This apple was grown by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson with Jefferson writing “They (being France) have no apples here to compare with our Newtown Pippin.” I was sold right there! For Felicia a selling point was it is said that Queen Victoria was a fan of this apple. She was presented with a basket of the apples in 1838. Afterward, British Parliament lifted import duties on the variety. This apple is known for cider making and develops more sugars while in storage.

Newtown Pippin Apple 

The trees have been ordered and we await their arrival! We will write another post about getting them planted once that is accomplished!

History of History Acres

Wow! We sure have been slacking on the blog writing front. To be fair, things got pretty busy with mostly boring things like cleaning the house and continuing unpacking the house. We also have had other projects in the works that will probably become future posts.

We thought for this one we would talk about the history of the house. Note, we are still researching the house and hoping to learn more about it, but here is what we know so far.

The county website says the house was built in 1920. However, we noticed that a lot of historic houses in this county are listed as being built in 1920. So, we needed to do more sleuthing into when it was built. To do this, we went to look at some plat maps of the township.

In 1859 the land was owned by Chester Adams and had no buildings on it.




In the 1876 plat map there is a building added to the picture and it is now owned by William Cade.




In the 1916 county atlas the property is now owned by Herman Bottcher.




Well, on the 1859 map there were no buildings shown on the plat map, so we knew that the house was built after 1859. Then we looked at the 1876 plat map and saw that there was a building in the same spot consistently after that. That spot, when lined up with a modern map of the same scale would be exactly where our house is. Ok so narrowed it down. The house was most likely built between 1859 and 1876. Now… who built it and when….

From there we went to the county recorder office and researched the owners of the property listed on the plat map to see who owned the property when. We learned that, the owners were as follows:

1917 - Albert A Betker
1903 - Herman Bottcher
1873 - William R Cade
1863 - Richard E Cade
1857 - Chester Adams (Buying property for railroad easement)
18XX – William Insley

We were able to find transfers of deeds for most of the early property owners. We still haven’t found the deed for the transfer between Richard Cade and William Cade (father and son). Richard Cade and William Cade were the owners for most of the 1859-1876 time frame. We did recently find in a local history book published by the Capac Historical Society that Richard transferred the property to William in 1873. So, we went forward looking for information on them to try to figure out which one built the house.

What we found was really interesting.

Richard Cade came to Michigan in 1856 and rented a farm in Washington Township. Later, he came to Mussey Township and purchased 80 acres of forest land in section 18. Here he built a log cabin and cut a wagon road through the woods to Downey’s Corners (today, this is the road that runs from our house into town!) He then got rid of the farm and moved to Romeo, MI. From there, he moved to Washington state. William R. Cade his son spent much of his younger years helping his father clear and improve their homestead, particularly after he returned from the Civil War. William served in the 4th Michigan, Company H. When he turned 22, his father turned it over to him. He was married in 1872. In the book, written in 1903, it is written that “Mr. Cade has 70 acres of his farm under cultivation, conducts general farming and stock breeding, has an excellent barn and a very handsome dwelling, and a wind-mill for pumping water for his home and stock.” We believe this is about our house. We are currently thinking that the house was built between 1866 (when William R. Cade musters out of the 4th Michigan and returns home to help his father improve their homestead) and his marriage or transfer of ownership to him in 1872 and 1873, respectively. The house is built in a similar style to other houses in the area built in the late 1860’s - mid 1870’s.

Since the house was built, it has been added onto 3 times, at least. The first being the addition of what is now a bathroom and a kitchen (we think this was added in the early 1900’s between 1903 and 1922). Perhaps, this is where the 1920’s date the county had came from. At this time, it appears the house was heavily remodeled, including the laying of a second hardwood floor on top of the original 19th century floors on the first floor of the home. We found a picture at the Capac Historical Museum, taken at the schoolhouse across the road, that has our house in the background from 1922. In this picture, the addition had already been added.




The owners before us heavily remodeled the house, much of which we are undoing to bring back many of the historical features of the home. Many of these projects are/will be featured on this blog. For additions, they added on a sun porch, living room, and craft room.

Though the house has gone through many changes, we know it is a home filled with many great memories. In doing research, we found many newspaper articles that referenced township farm bureau meetings being held here, other social groups meeting, families raised, and even a wedding ceremony! We hope to bring back many of the historical features of the house both from the 19th century and the turn of the 20th century, add to the houses memories, and see what other clues we can find as to when the house was built.

Rusty Barn Gold

I was going to just put these photos up on Facebook. However, someone commented that there is a blog and this could be a post! This is just a simple collection of snapshots I have taken of items found in the two barns or out on the property. There are some other items laying around that I haven't taken photos of.  Perhaps not as interesting, at least to me, or just didn't remember to take the picture. Also, some is probably "modern" or just trash in our minds. We are certain that more will be found as we explore.  Especially, once we get around to really sprucing up the barns.  I added short comments to each of the photos for a description. I certainly do not know everything about the items found.  We welcome comments or any information/knowledge you might have to share!

Large square bolt and nut in with a pile of wood behind a barn.

These were found in the loft of the grain barn. I plan  to clean them up, reshape, and put handles back on them at some point. 

There are a couple of these "repairs" of small holes in the grain barn. 

Box of random items in the large barn. Mostly old electric fence porcelain insulators. 

Hook and eye latch keeping a hatch closed in the grain barn. Perhaps hand forged? 

Mirror found in a barn. Assume it did go on top of a dresser. It is upside down still in this photo. 

Several old doors from the house that are stored in one of the barns. 

One of the two lightning rods on the grain barn. 

A couple of door rollers and a set of black porcelain door knobs. The door knobs I came across in piles of debris. 

This was found laying in tall grass behind a barn. I am not completely sure what it once was or was part of. 

Ice tongs and large pulley hanging in the larger barn.

Bin of old tools, mostly square wrenches, found in the grain barn. A planter (corn?) of some sort on the right. 

Large wrench of some type. Not really sure about this one. 

This photo didn't turn out well with the sun shining through the door. A old yoke harness hanging up in the grain barn. 

What’s Under the Carpet?

Well after a Facebook post over a week ago that talked about ripping carpet out of our historic house, I suppose it is time to tell people what was actually under the carpet.

Now we knew, sort of, what was under the carpet. We were told there were hardwood floors under the carpet by the previous owners. We were also told, however, that these hardwood floors were in rough shape with bad repair work and a large burned spot from a coal stove. Well one day… 3 days after getting the keys to the place, we decided we couldn’t take wondering what the floors looked like any more. So, we grabbed a crowbar and utility knife and got to work on a small room since “we were only going to pull out one room” just to see what the floors looked like.

 Our first view of the wood floor.

For some reason this room had no staples or tack strip holding down the carpet it was just tucked under the baseboard. It took about 5 minutes to rip out this tiny room of carpet and what we found was beautiful.

Before

Before and after

We were hooked. It also helped that we were waiting for Dish Network people to come (which they never did) and so had to keep working, instead of going home and finishing packing. We also had just had all the carpets cleaned that we weren’t going to rip out, so these were the only rooms we could actually work in while the other carpets dried.

So on to the next room we went… This room was most likely a parlor historically and for us is our temporary bedroom until we remodel a room upstairs. At which point, it will become a parlor again.

 

The carpet in the Parlor.  

This carpet was far harder to remove. It was held in with tack strip on the edges and staples at the seams. We went to work. This carpet was probably 30 years old and had 30 years of dust in it. It was after this carpet that we decided to make a visit to the local hardware store and get some dust masks. Our lungs and sinuses thanked us for that. The carpet was heavy, thick, Made in the USA and I am pretty sure rather expensive when it was put in the house. we almost felt bad taking a utility knife to it, but it had to be done.

Below the parlor carpet we found this:                                                    

 The floor had no major problems besides a few small water damage areas. We were excited!

So of course on to the next room we went.

This room was the most terrifying for us to rip out. It was the room with the previously mentioned damage and shoddy repair work. Every foot we tore the carpet out the more and more anxious we would get just expecting the worst to appear…

Much to our surprise, elation, and confusion we found no major issues with the floor.

The process

The floor! 

The dining room floor is immaculate. There is one repair, but it matches fairly well. And there was not a giant burned space. We were ecstatic about this.

The Repair

Well we were on such a role that we just had to keep going. We then ripped out the carpet in what historically, perhaps was the kitchen.

The floor in this room

Inside the closet of this room we found a bit of a surprise. There is a second wood floor that runs underneath this beautiful oak floor. With a board cut out to have a hiding space (though there wasn’t anything too exciting in it).

Bottom of board

Top of board

    

More research needs to be done into the double wood floors which are in 3 out of 4 of the rooms. The other room has 2 layers of the thin boards.

Two layers of small board wood floors 

Previously, we had decided to "eventually" tear out one room of carpet in to expose a grate to allow heat to rise in what will become our bedroom. We found a grate in the attic and wondered where its home was. We went hunting for it and realized that there was a grate in the parlor, but not one in the room above it and went to investigate. We aren’t really sure why it was sealed off or why they carpeted over it, but we figured 30 minutes would take care of that and it did.

The grate from the room below

 

The spot for a grate

The grate returned to its home

We had been informed that the upstairs did not have a wood floor anymore….What I think the case was, is that the previous owner did not think of the original 19^th century flooring as a wood floor, but as more of a subfloor because it was painted and less finished than your more modern wood floors. Boy were we surprised. So, now we have decided to repaint that floor its original color, which was a very popular color in the 19^th century a reddish brown. I’d love to have just left the original paint, but it looks like someone previously had laid the molding on the wood floor and painted it there leaving white paint all over the original floor and paint. Sadly, it must be repainted.

The floor as it is now.

And thus ended our saga of carpet ripping out, which has now turned in to a few more projects and a need to research more.

History Acres

Recently, my husband and I decided to pack up all of our stuff and move ourselves from the city out into the county to live our dream of having a historic farmhouse and 10 acres of land. We ended up with a nice historic farm house and 12 acres of land. 

Our plan, return the house to having more of its historic character back and start producing our own food.

We were joking that we are making quite a change: moving from a condo in the city where we don’t have to maintain the yard or outside part of the building, to a big old house on 12 acres with 2 barns and a garage…. Also, we have a well and septic now…. What have we done!!! But we sure are looking forward to it.

We decided to start a blog for all of this to share our crazy adventures with our friends and families and anyone else who stumbles upon it looking for a story of a historical house and farm.

And so, the story of History Acres has started.