She's at home with history

Marian Pierre-Louis visits the gravesite of the Hiram Cowell family, original owners of an 1835 house in Wrentham that she researched. (Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff)

Every house has a story, and Marian Pierre-Louis is committed to discovering and preserving it.

"I've always loved old houses - I'm obsessed with them," said Pierre-Louis, vice president of the Medway Historical Society and founder of Fieldstone Historic Research, which tracks genealogical and house histories.

When homeowners learn about the people who lived in their house decades or even centuries before, the landscape of American history becomes all the more real to them, Pierre-Louis said, adding, "I would like to make that history more accessible to people."

Such research can play an important role in documenting and preserving history at any time, but nowadays there are more practical reasons for delving into a house's past. In a declining real estate market, in which homeowners are searching for unique features to help sell their properties, knowing a house's history and explaining it to buyers can make it stand out, Pierre-Louis said.

As part of the service her company provides, Pierre-Louis prepares booklets, on parchment paper, containing a summary of the home's history and previous owners, copies of deeds and census records, photographs and other materials relating to its past. She charges between $100 and $400 for compiling a history, she said.

But the process is not necessarily complex, Pierre-Louis said - anybody can trace the history of their house if they use the right tools.

Pierre-Louis said she has completed between 10 and 20 house histories this year, including one for a couple living on Rockwood Road in Norfolk. For that project, she used an 1876 map of the property that showed a straw shop situated close to the house, and tracked down census records reporting that the family's daughter worked with straw.

She recently did a history for a woman living on Lincoln Street in Franklin who presented it to her husband as a 25th anniversary present. In addition to tracing the 1880 house's previous owners, Pierre-Louis discovered that the stonework on its exterior resembled the style of Elmer Vendetto, who had built several houses in Medway around that time .

Her latest house history has been one of the most in-depth, in part because she was presented with so many source materials from which to work.

Scott and Margaret Settle, a Wrentham couple looking to sell their antique Cape after nearly 12 years, met Pierre-Louis through their realtor, who recommended they obtain a history of their 1835 home.

The Settles' house, on Route 1A (a stretch of the old Boston Post Road), has five original fireplaces, including two with beehive stoves that were used to prepare food. The 13 windows in the front part of the house are each etched with a Roman numeral, signifying which window was crafted for which opening in the walls. A glass-windowed gun and powder closet is in the basement, close to one of the fireplaces, which would have kept its contents dry.

The basement is also where the Settles keep one of the most tantalizing pieces of their home's history: the marble gravestone of original owner Hiram Cowell, "who died May 31, 1845, in the 41st year of his age." A previous owner had discovered it outside the basement door, where it served as a stepping stone.

The gravestone was one of several historical "documents" upon which Pierre-Louis relied in her research. In addition, the Settles presented her with architectural drawings and dozens of photographs dating to the 1940s. "It was a treasure trove - this is the most stuff I've been given ahead of time," she said.

Relying upon these items, Pierre-Louis consulted deeds, census records and tax documents in piecing together her history of the Cowell homestead, in which Hiram had lived with his wife, Susan Fisher, and their three children prior to his death.

Restorations and additions over the years have doubled the size of the original home to about 2,000 square feet. Old photographs indicated the locations of the original entrances to the home, as well as the existence of a free-standing barn nearby.

"Historical photographs are great," Pierre-Louis said. "You can show the progress and the chronology of the house in a really visual way that you can't get through the words or the deeds."

A trip to the Wrentham Center Cemetery solved the gravestone-as-stepping-stone mystery. After Susan Fisher's death in 1887, she was buried alongside her husband under a joint gravestone, and their son, Charles, most likely took the original marker back to the house and put it to use.

"That's pretty common," Pierre-Louis said. "They didn't want to waste the stone."

Celia Hanson, the realtor working with the Settles, said potential buyers are taking more time to visit the house as they browse its history booklet.

"It really sets it apart, especially in the type of market and economy we're in," Hanson said. With antique houses, she said, "the buyers want to know the history, what it was, and who had it before them."

Scott Settle agreed, saying that when he and his wife bought the property, "We didn't want something that was a cookie-cutter home."

Pierre-Louis gives lectures on compiling house histories, and said it's a process anybody could undertake.

"Finding the information is like a mystery, and the discovery of it is kind of cool," she said. "If I can get more people to research the histories of their own houses, that preserves more history."

The first step, she said, is to research the house's property records, and noted that the Norfolk County Registry of Deeds has information online. Next, consult census records with the names on the deeds, using online services such as Ancestry.com or HeritageQuestOnline.

Then, "get local," Pierre-Louis said. Go to the town hall or library and consult tax records, which can reveal the size of the land tract, how many buildings were on it, whether the property housed animals, and the property's changing value over time.

Finally, "if you have the opportunity, go to the local cemetery," she said.

"Gravestones usually don't lie . . . and it's as close as you can get to touching these people."