A while back I downloaded this randomly found map of Beebe Plain, which is a town that sits right on the Vermont Canadian border. My father's family was from there going back perhaps 250 years and if you look in the upper middle of the map down about 4 household you'll see H. House which was the home my great-great-grandfather Hiram.
About 60 years ago I visited the area with my parents we went over into the Canadian part and found relatives went back to round 1800 or so. It was illuminating but we had no idea where in Beebe this house was and my father live there only for a couple years until he was 3 and then came back for a couple years there after before he turned seven. You see his father was in the Maine to Boston railroad and that was pretty much the end of the line. The point is that we could have driven around for days and not found the homestead as it was, as now, just a pasture.
Just out of curiosity, a few weeks ago, I took a look at Google Earth to see if I could find a shot of the lot where my father lived and where my great-great-great-grandfather lived and probably some before that as well as this map is from the late 1850s.
That's the lot from a few miles up. And the skeleton shadow Of The Farmhouse is clearly visible. That lot according to local records has been vacant but owned by the family just on the other side of the hedges for over a hundred years and it's now considered one so it's a good chance there was no building there or somewhere along the line my great great great grandfather's house was taken down. My father who was in that house for a few years remembered it as being up on the top of a little hill and the pasture where they kept a few animals fell down to the South. It wasn't very big, actually quite modest, and if you look quite closely you'll see a walking path from the side of the house out back to what my father used to say where the outbuildings including the out house and a small shed.
I could drive by that spot a hundred times and not see what I could see from Google Earth. I guess it's how you look at things.
