We went to the DC Historical Society, located in the old Carnegie library across the street from the Convention Center. We looked in old phone directories (they have them back to the late 1800s) to find the names of people who lived in our house before us. Surprisingly, you can search by your address and get the name of the person who lived in the house at the time. The phone directories also list whether or not the person was the owner of the house, his/her occupation and, later, whether or not s/he had a phone. Some of the years are on microfilm and the collection is incomplete in the 50s and 60s. But we got a really good picture of the previous owners of our house. Also, once we knew the names, we searched in earlier volumes to find out where they had lived before moving to our house.

The library is open Tuesday through Saturday and the librarian is very helpful. They also have maps, photo collections, and a searchable online database. http://www.historydc.org/

The downtown library on the 3rd floor has some great research files. I found out my house was owned from 1916 – 1927 by a guy named Goldstein, who sold it to a man in 1927 who died and left it to his sister that same year. The guy who owned my house from 1960 – 1997 owned a couple of pool halls and liquors stores in the area. There are even some great shots of the neighborhood that you can find as far back as 1920.

Am not sure where this is in DC, but I had an old Victorian in Maryland that I researched back to the original owners in 1886. I had to go Annapolis and look up old tax assessment records. Someone owns the property before the house is built, and then at some point, an improvement is put on the property. That’s the year your house was built.

you can search recorder of deeds on line from the dc.gov website. there are small fees to see the deeds online but you can at least get names for free if you know your lot/sqaure.