This article first appeared in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News "Nearby History" column on July 27, 2024.
By Hayley Noble, Executive Director
One of the most frequent research requests we get at the Latah County Historical Society (LCHS) is if we have information on individual houses or commercial buildings. Folks move into a historic house and want to know who the previous owners were, if we have any old photos, and if we have blueprints of the property. Most of the time, we have to say, “no;” it is very rare to have blueprints in our collection. But it is far more likely that we may be able to discern who the previous owners were and there is a chance that we may have photos of particular building in our collection. Unless you live in a previous prominent family’s home, the first step in most cases is to visit the Latah County Courthouse auditor’s office to access your property’s deed history. The auditor’s office does have some deed histories available online but the documents only date back to the 1970s. For any older records, you will need to visit their office in person to search their records. To perform a records search online, find the parcel number by visiting https://gis.latah.id.us/ParcelViewer/ParcelViewer.html. Then you can search for the parcel at https://latahcountyid.gov/assessor/deedquery/. Another line of inquiry is to try searching your name at https://latahcountyid.gov/auditor/audrecordsearch/ to see if your current property is listed and work backwards. But as stated before, this will not be a complete history if your building was constructed before the 1970s.
Another avenue is to obtain your deed history through a title company. Latah County Title Company is the oldest title business in Moscow, operating since 1895. They might be able to assist in your prior property-owner search. Once you have learned who the former owners of a property were, you can contact the Latah County Historical Society to make a research appointment. The LCHS database contains records of the items in our collection, including photographs, artifacts, documents, and more. The database is searchable, but not perfect. We are more likely to find records connected to families and names, rather than addresses, which is why we recommend obtaining the names of previous occupants. Once we know those names, we can search our database for anything related to those people, which might include house information. Sometimes that can include photographs or details from the family that resided there, or nothing at all. LCHS relies upon donated materials for its collection, and we may have not received anything related to the family or house in question.
The LCHS research office also has an Ancestry subscription. Once names are obtained, an Ancestry search can usually locate census records. Those census records, organized by address, can reveal who the neighbors where, where residents were born, and who was living in a household during the census year. Although census records can be very useful, they can also be a bit difficult to read depending on the census-taker’s handwriting, spelling errors, and incorrect information recorded. Another difficulty is that census records can only be accessed after 72 years, meaning that the most recent census year available is 1940.
If your house is in an older part of Moscow, we might already have information related to the property in our collection. For example, houses in the Fort Russell Historic District have been well-photographed and researched as part of the National Register of Historic Places nomination process and were the homes of Moscow’s early prominent residents, so their histories are more likely to be recorded. We, and other predominantly white historical societies, are left with biases in our collection, where previously material related to poorer neighborhoods and areas with minorities was not collected. As such, we have gaps in our knowledge when it comes to non-white, working-class neighborhoods.
One misconception is that LCHS holds the records related to original homesteads in our collection. The Homestead Acts, first enacted in 1862, were federal programs and those original records have largely been digitized through the Bureau of Land Management. To research those original documents, simply google “General Land Office Records” and pick the site with a “blm.gov” link. Once on that page, you can search land patents, survey plats, and more. LCHS does have several plat map books detailing land ownership, but those original records are housed on the BLM website.
If you want to learn more about a commercial property, one of the useful resources in the LCHS collection are phone directories. The directories contain addresses which help locate where a business was, and usually some advertisements in the later books. Another way to glean addresses is from newspaper advertisements. Local ads in the paper can be helpful in determining years of operation and intended clientele. Some of Latah County’s newspapers have been digitized, but a large portion have not, so oftentimes LCHS staff consults the digitized University of Idaho Argonaut newspaper housed online with the University Library for old business ads.
Another resource that LCHS uses when researching property histories are Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. Those maps detail building materials, original property footprints, and placement on the lot a building occupied. Many of the early Sanborn Maps in Latah County are available online through the Library of Congress. LCHS does have a few physical Sanborn Maps in its collection, notably a few books that have the original maps pasted over with additions from the 1950s and 60s. One trick is to hold the paper up to the light to see the original maps, with the changes over top to see the evolution of a particular neighborhood.
Unfortunately, researching building histories, whether residential or commercial, can be a complicated process. Not everything is available online or has a photo, addresses change, and resources can be housed in different offices or repositories. Researching house histories can be particularly cumbersome because it can involve visits to County offices, title companies, the Latah County Historical Society archive, or the University of Idaho Special Collections and Archives, plus resources available online. Despite this daunting task, LCHS staff is always happy to assist in your search, but it sometimes involves patience and disappointment. We at LCHS have a lot of resources at our disposal, but unfortunately, we don’t have everything, and folks do not always see the value in documenting their property’s changes until it is too late.