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The first step in establishing the "land genealogy" of a house is to find out when it was built: the equivalent, as it were, of a person's birth certificate.
Cadastral plans and matrices, drawn up during the first half of the 19th century, can provide the answer. Events such as alterations and extensions may also be mentioned.
Land genealogy
Perhaps genealogy isn't the most appropriate term, but rather the history of a house, a singular place.
And yet, on the scale of a human lifetime, stone and buildings seem immutable. The time of a house and the time of a person are not on the same plane: one "encompasses" the other. And so a link is established between these people, all of whom, before you, have lived in this place. And so, associated with each place of life, a community is formed, made up of all its successive inhabitants, all those who have shared it at different times. This idea of lineage is spatial rather than genetic, even though several generations of the same family may have lived under the same roof.
Some even go so far as to evoke the permanence of the "spirit" of these people: the premises remain inhabited by their departed occupants. Which, in a figurative sense, is quite simple: this living space would not be what it is today, without all those who lived there and left their mark, their memory!
The genealogist will endeavor, by exploiting a range of sources specific to the archives, to redraw the contours of this small human community: all the inhabitants of your home. In practice, we distinguish between occupants mentioned in population censuses and rental leases, and owners recorded in notarial and mortgage archives.
Deeds of transfer (sale, donation, auction, etc.) will be searched, and a copy of each deed will be sent to you.
A chronology summarizing all the information found will be produced, according to the following example:
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