By Imogen Wegman
There is something very appealing about finding out the story of a house – whether it’s the construction of the physical building, the lives of those who have passed through its doors, or the land on which it is built.
As a landscape historian and family history lecturer at the University of Tasmania, I am often asked for help with navigating land and house records. Our introductory unit – Place, Image and Object – explores how these material things carry stories and provide a way to relate to your family’s past.
Start by gathering the information you already know, and organising it into a timeline. Identify the names of people and places, and the gaps in the details. These will help determine your approach, especially as you try to decide where to begin.
Often, the physical location and address are good starting points: try looking up the address in some different records, or use spatial records like aerial photographs and maps to see what might have changed over time.
As part of the Everyday Heritage project, as one of the Chief Investigators on this project, I worked with one of my co-Chief Investigators, Dr Kate Bagnall, to research the history of a house built in Hobart by Royden Ah Chung, the son of Chinese migrants, in the early 20th century. Kate knew approximately when the house had been built and sold, but the family records weren’t clear on when alterations had been made or exactly why.
By searching the Tasmanian Archives for the name of the main road running through the area, we found a partially dated subdivision plan with enough detail to lead us to a 1915 advertisement in The Mercury for plots of land for sale.
These records gave us a starting date to look for Royden’s purchase of the property. And, because LandTasmania generously provides digitised copies of all their historic land titles records, I found the Certificate of Title, which contained a great amount of information about the property’s history.
The certificate told us that Royden bought his block in 1922, the land went to his wife and two children on his death in 1949, and they sold it in 1953. It was then sold several times in quick succession in 1964, 1966, and 1968.
The written record runs out after the 1960s, as privacy laws restrict what information is available about property owners from the mid-century onwards. So, we can only speculate what happened later in the century.
The house started as an elegant but simple single-storey family home, then expanded vertically with the construction of another floor to accommodate a growing family’s needs. It lived a second life as separated flats, with the stories of different people soaking into each floor.
Now that the timeline has been built, there are more research tangents to follow, to see what new narratives can be uncovered about this house.
About the author
Imogen Wegman is the Coordinator of the Family History Program at the University of Tasmania, and she researches the relationships between colonisers and the physical environments of colonisation. She has spent years working in a variety of public history settings and is known for getting too enthusiastic about historic maps.
Pictured: Queenborough House, 19 Queen St, Sandy Bay, Tasmanian Archives, NS1013/1/1988
