I came up with a way to automatically grab the age of every building in my county from the Internet! Wow am I excited... now instead of pouring over old maps and matching up houses with newer maps to find out which old houses are still in my area, I can simply sort my list by date and focus on only those pre-1800.
I'm using the county tax website for the source, and because I have programming skills, I made a program to grab year, owner's name, address and home value for all 206,821 buildings in the entire county. Then I'll take all the pre-1800 homes, and use my programs on another website to geo-code the address to get the lat/long of each building, then use the free version of Google Maps to plot maps of all those houses with a little label above each one showing the date.
I'll also be able to automatically generate letters asking for permission to hunt, and only for those houses that are coded as single family dwellings and whatever date range I want.
This is way too cool so I had to share my excitement! Below I list the frequency of all the pre-1900 homes out of the 14,000+ that have been downloaded so far. The programs take a long time to call up each building's web page and grab the info... about 20,000 per day. So far it shows 56 homes built in the year 1800 or earlier, and that's with only 7% of the total grabbed so far.
After I bought my Coin$trike two years ago, I finally learned that this hobby is all about location, Location, LOCATION! I worked with some old maps and got permission to hunt a few pre-1800 properties and found many firsts... large cents, half cents, civil war token, buttons, etc. Now I made myself the ultimate research tool that will put me in the right spots again and again, so I anticipate some very exciting hunts in the near future!
If you're curious, look up your local county tax website and see what they offer, as I'm sure each county has their own policies. You may find they offer this info without all the steps that I've been taking, so lucky for you!
Good Hunting, and I look forward to posting some goodies soon!
Brian
Lancaster, PA, USA
year,number of homes
1738,1
1743,1
1747,1
1750,7
1752,1
1760,2
1762,1
1770,2
1780,3
1785,1
1789,2
1790,3
1791,2
1792,1
1793,1
1794,1
1795,2
1798,1
1800,23
1806,1
1807,1
1810,5
1812,2
1813,4
1814,2
1815,1
1820,14
1821,2
1823,1
1825,6
1830,4
1833,1
1836,1
1839,1
1840,17
1844,2
1845,3
1846,2
1847,1
1848,1
1849,1
1850,95
1851,2
1852,3
1853,2
1854,3
1855,2
1856,2
1857,11
1858,14
1859,2
1860,72
1862,2
1863,2
1864,3
1865,4
1866,2
1867,5
1868,5
1869,3
1870,60
1871,2
1872,4
1874,1
1875,38
1876,5
1877,3
1878,5
1879,7
1880,147
1881,1
1882,3
1883,2
1884,2
1885,23
1886,8
1887,7
1888,18
1889,5
1890,233
1891,8
1892,8
1893,8
1894,6
1895,32
1896,6
1898,21
1899,3
1900,700
I'm using the county tax website for the source, and because I have programming skills, I made a program to grab year, owner's name, address and home value for all 206,821 buildings in the entire county. Then I'll take all the pre-1800 homes, and use my programs on another website to geo-code the address to get the lat/long of each building, then use the free version of Google Maps to plot maps of all those houses with a little label above each one showing the date.
I'll also be able to automatically generate letters asking for permission to hunt, and only for those houses that are coded as single family dwellings and whatever date range I want.
This is way too cool so I had to share my excitement! Below I list the frequency of all the pre-1900 homes out of the 14,000+ that have been downloaded so far. The programs take a long time to call up each building's web page and grab the info... about 20,000 per day. So far it shows 56 homes built in the year 1800 or earlier, and that's with only 7% of the total grabbed so far.
After I bought my Coin$trike two years ago, I finally learned that this hobby is all about location, Location, LOCATION! I worked with some old maps and got permission to hunt a few pre-1800 properties and found many firsts... large cents, half cents, civil war token, buttons, etc. Now I made myself the ultimate research tool that will put me in the right spots again and again, so I anticipate some very exciting hunts in the near future!
If you're curious, look up your local county tax website and see what they offer, as I'm sure each county has their own policies. You may find they offer this info without all the steps that I've been taking, so lucky for you!
Good Hunting, and I look forward to posting some goodies soon!
Brian
Lancaster, PA, USA
year,number of homes
1738,1
1743,1
1747,1
1750,7
1752,1
1760,2
1762,1
1770,2
1780,3
1785,1
1789,2
1790,3
1791,2
1792,1
1793,1
1794,1
1795,2
1798,1
1800,23
1806,1
1807,1
1810,5
1812,2
1813,4
1814,2
1815,1
1820,14
1821,2
1823,1
1825,6
1830,4
1833,1
1836,1
1839,1
1840,17
1844,2
1845,3
1846,2
1847,1
1848,1
1849,1
1850,95
1851,2
1852,3
1853,2
1854,3
1855,2
1856,2
1857,11
1858,14
1859,2
1860,72
1862,2
1863,2
1864,3
1865,4
1866,2
1867,5
1868,5
1869,3
1870,60
1871,2
1872,4
1874,1
1875,38
1876,5
1877,3
1878,5
1879,7
1880,147
1881,1
1882,3
1883,2
1884,2
1885,23
1886,8
1887,7
1888,18
1889,5
1890,233
1891,8
1892,8
1893,8
1894,6
1895,32
1896,6
1898,21
1899,3
1900,700