Memories, mashed between the wrinkles of my mind . . .
I live in the house in the small town in which I grew up.  I remember, after I went off to college back in 197*coughcoughhack, that my father was debating how to handle the town's first experiment with house numbering.  He finally decided not to put the numbers assigned to our house on the post out front, because he figured the numbers would probably change sooner or later, and he'd have to do it again.  He was right, several times -- I recently found the first set of numbers in a small box in his workshop.  The house numbers were not finalized until after my family and I moved back some years ago.  However, the town didn't yet have the concept down, probably since we have few real blocks and those that do exist are in the "newer" parts of town.  So, my house is numbered 331, which, in a city "back in the United States," should mean I live in the third block from the starting point of the street.  However, I am 1/2 mile from the starting point -- a difficult point to explain to visitors from "back in the United States."
Growing up, the common way of telling folks how to find your house was by referring to the distance down a particular road, past the big cottonwood tree on the left, turn at the dog on the right, etc.  We still do that, as do most old-timers around here.  In fact, my kids still give directions that way, even though most folks around now have house numbers.  You can tell who the new-timers are around here, because they tell you where they live by referring to house numbers and streets instead of landmarks.
Jeff
 
Jeffrey L. Boyer, RPA
Office of Archaeological Studies
P.O. Box 2087
Santa Fe, New Mexico  87504
tel: 505.827.6343
fax: 505.827.3904
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
"It might look a bit messy now, but just you come back in 500 years time."  --Terry Pratchett
 

________________________________

From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY on behalf of geoff carver
Sent: Sat 10/29/2005 1:52 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Houses with Names?



i have a quote somewhere from about 1800 where someone identifies a site relative to a house number for the first time, and specifically refers to the "new" custom of numbering houses
previous to that i have several examples of very convoluted descriptions like "the house across from the pub called x, which is down the street from the church" & so on -
makes it very difficult to relocate a site
which might answer the question of why the practice seems to have been discontinued

"Ron May" <[log in to unmask]> schrieb:
> This past week, I have been researching a house identified in the County
> Recorder's records as "Sea Bluff." A few weeks ago, another house was identified
> as "La Casa de las Siete Candelas" (house of seven candles). Has anyone out
> there got ideas on why and when people named houses? Why dont we see this
> anymore? Is there a cultural or historical root to this practice of naming
> houses?




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