“Old houses, I thought, do not belong to people ever, not really, people belong to them.”
— Gladys Taber
“Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
This past Wednesday was, of course, the 23rd anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history. We rightly pause at various points during the day to recall the major events that are burned into the memory of any American who is old enough to remember them. Here, locally, the day also marked the 14th anniversary of the fire that destroyed a downtown funeral home and pushed us out of the Probate/Juvenile Court, which was then located at 88 N. Sandusky St.
A coworker, Teresa Tackett, called me at home at about four in the morning to tell me that the courthouse was ablaze. I quickly got dressed, and as I exited my house, some four or five blocks from the courthouse, could immediately smell smoke when I opened my back door. Knowing that wasn’t a good sign, I made my way across town to find that seven fire departments were on scene and three buildings were now involved.
That fire burned for most of the morning (and at one point, several of us actually entered the lower level of the court – which was not on fire – to retrieve several needed items) and was investigated for weeks by local fire departments and the ATF. The court spent all of Saturday afternoon and Sunday on contingency planning and ended up postponing only one day of hearings, despite not being able to get back into the building for weeks afterwards.
Though that courthouse actually did catch fire, I frequently hear reports about a courthouse fire that absolutely never happened. Those claims almost always come about in conversations about how old some of Delaware’s oldest buildings are. Ask that question around here, and an awful lot of people will tell you, “Well, I don’t know for sure, but the deed says 1901.” And if you take part in that conversation long enough, you’ll hear the same excuse given over and over again: “There was a fire at the courthouse and all the records were destroyed, so they just put 1901.”
This story has always seemed suspect to me. I’d never heard of a fire in the 1868 courthouse, and no other records had been lost as far I could tell. The old Courthouse had long been home to all of the county’s offices and the commissioners. I’ve personally reviewed commissioners’ records going back to the county’s founding (with thank to Chris Shaw at the Records Center), and we have probate records going back to the 1820s. If there was a fire, why would only property records be destroyed?
So I turned to the source that would have the most information about the history of the 1868 Delaware County Courthouse, the late Judge Henry E. Shaw, Jr. He was county prosecutor for several years and then, in 1976, he took over the Common Pleas General Division bench, where he presided until 2003. He made one thing abundantly clear the moment I told him why I was calling: there was never a fire at the 1868 Delaware County Courthouse. He also quickly noted that people aren’t referring to any construction date in their deeds, but rather to the date listed in their property abstract on the Delaware County Auditor’s website.
That led me to my next two stops — Delaware County Recorder Melissa Jordan and Delaware County Auditor George Kaitsa. Both kindly met with me to discuss this mystery, and they ultimately led to an answer.
Recorder Jordan pointed out that deed records going back to the founding of the county are complete and contain no gaps from fire damage. She noted that often when people run into missing or misdated records they default to a “there was a fire” explanation. She pointed out that people often research ownership of their property through deed transfers back to the early days of the county.
Auditor Kaitsa also noted that there were no missing or destroyed records. He made the observation that the date on the auditor’s record is, by no means, intended to be a historical document. Although he didn’t immediately have an answer on the 1901 date, he took it upon himself to do more research and found that when the Auditor’s Office first began to computerize records, something needed to be put into the data entry field for the construction date of improvements to the property. Full deed searches were not necessary and would waste manpower and taxpayer money, so for buildings constructed before the turn of the century, a date — often 1901 — was entered on the auditor’s property card.
As an example, the old Stratford Methodist Church, beautifully renovated to serve as the offices of architect Dave Kerr, was built in the early 1840s. The auditor’s property record lists another common default date, 1920. A little further south on Chapman Road, ODNR owns the ruins of James Beiber’s 1876 mill. Because that mill is just a ruin (and yes, this time you can blame a fire), the auditor’s record lists no improvement on the land, and no construction date.
You can certainly still research the age of a property. Deed transfer documents at the Recorders Office, old county directories held by the Delaware County Historical Society, and even a wonderful hand-drawn aerial map of the city of Delaware from 1890, are among the resources available for property researchers.
David Hejmanowski is judge of the Probate/Juvenile Division of the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas, where he has served as magistrate, court administrator, and now judge, since 2003. He has written a weekly column on law and history for The Gazette since 2005.
