Research Your Home or Neighborhood

  • Always begin your search with current information and work back in time.  Filling in the worksheet below with the information you already know will get the ball rolling. Click here to View a Sample Project
  • Copy these suggested questions into your own format.  Answer these question about your house: how old is my house, who built my house, who lived in my house, can I find blue prints/plans of my house, are there photographs of my house, and what is the history of the neighborhood.

Click Here for our Century Home Recognition Program 

WORKSHEET – WORKSHEET – WORKSHEET

Copy the following outline into your own document.
Use this outline as a guide to help answer your questions about your home.

The Moreland Hills Historical Society
Heritage and Century Home Recognition Program

  • Who I am.
    • Address of the Heritage or Century House:
    • Present Owner:
    • Phone:
    • Email:
    • Address of Present Owner (if different than above):
  • Describe my Real Estate Property. 

    • Permanent Parcel Number (Began 1935):
    • Legal Description of Lot:
    • Subdivision:
    • Tract Number:
    • Sublot number:
    • Original Lot number:
    • Division Name:
    • Include a Copy of Property Summary Report
    • Year house was built:
    • Search for building permits.
    • Exterior Construction Materials:
    • Number of Rooms:
    • Number of Bedrooms:
    • Include narrative describing major improvements.
    • Include photographs of the front, rear and side elevations
      (Photos will not be returned.)
  • Who built my house? 
      • Tax duplicates will show tax increase do to house construction.  (Go to the volume for the year before and the year after construction date to prove the “tax increase.”)    Tax Duplicate Books are in order by 1. year, 2. volume, 3. Alpha.  For research you not only need homeowner name but you should have Property Range #, Tract #, Lot #
        • 1819-1869 Tax Duplicates available at Ancestry (need account)
        • 1819-1986 Tax Duplicates available at the Cuyahoga County Archives (alpha order)
          • 1904 Moreland Hills residents see volume 37 at Cuyahoga Co Archives
          • 1907, 1908, 1909 Moreland Hills residents see volume 39
          • at Cuyahoga Co Archives
          • 1910 Moreland Hills residents see volume 43 at Cuyahoga Co Archives
          • 1911, 1912, 1913 Moreland Hills residents see volume 51 at Cuyahoga Co Archives
          • 1916 Moreland Hills residents see volume 54 at Cuyahoga Co Archives
          • 1917, 1918, 1919 Moreland Hills residents see volume 56 at Cuyahoga Co Archives
          • 1920 Moreland Hills residents at Cuyahoga Co Archives see volume 56 
  • Who lived in my house? (Maps, Directories, Census)
  • Provide other interesting facts about the house, letters, Photocopies of historical information, such as wills, old letters, and old church directories, newspaper articles will help with documenting the home.  If you have this information, it will be added in the Historical Society’s archives.
    • Family Search is a good source for personal history.  You can find Census Records, Death, Birth & Marriage Records at this online source.
    • The Moreland Hills Historical Society, Chagrin Falls Historical Society and the Cleveland History Center may have records of interest.
    • The South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga Co. Library has a Memory Lab, (a “do-it-yourself” space for the community) to learn how to access, digitize, and share old videos, audio recordings, photographs, and slides. The Lab is open to the public at no charge.
    • Book Suggestion: A Field Guide to American Houses by Virginia McAlester by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.  The guide that enables you to identify, and place in their historic (17th century to the present) and architectural contexts, the houses you see in your neighborhood across America.  MHHS members may borrow our copy.