History of our house

We've done a bit of research on our house's history through some emailing to the local historical society and a brief visit to the Land Registry Office. We've discovered that our house was under construction during 1914, was completed sometime in 1915, and was sold to the first 'real' owner in 1916.

Here's a brief outline of the history of our house:

1909 - plan showing the lot is submitted to the city, owned by local church

1912 - lot sold to two real estate agents and a contractor ($3,000)

1913 - lot transferred to the contractor, real estate agents are removed from the deed ($2,350 changes hands)

1916 - property sold to the President of a local typewriter company (house is now complete) ($4001 + the new owner assumes an existing $7000 mortgage at 7% interest, so total value of transaction $11,001)

1948 - property sold to local college operating in the same neighbourhood ($18,000)

1948-1959 - college builds large classrooms at back of property

1957 - college becomes a university, moves to new permanent campus

1959 - property sold to Toronto engineer, who sets up electronics college ($19,500)

mid 1980s - engineer retires, closes electronics college, continues to live in the house

2008 - engineer passes away, we buy the house

We're going to try to pull more data from the 1901 and 1911 Canadian census records on the various people involved. We'll also head to the Ottawa archives to see if they have tax roll records like they do in Toronto. Those records show who was living in the house (all occupants, including servants and children), the occupation of the head of household, and their religious affiliation.