(Publisher’s note: a reader asked if there were a lot of pre-1900 homes in Chelsea, so I posed the question to Bill O’Reilly, president of the Chelsea Area Historical Society.)
The answer is: there are many pre-1900 homes in Chelsea.
He sent a sketch (above), made in 1881 (there’s a large copy of it in the Chelsea Area Historical Society Museum and reprints are also available in the museum gift shop.)
A look in the bottom left shows a train – following that to the right (or west) you can see the train depot and right behind that is the Boyd House – now the CAHS Museum, built in 1853. Immediately behind it is the house that once stood on the current CAHS property.
The second image (see it below) is from about the turn of the century and shows East Middle Street – the second house, with the widow’s peak, is the one that stood on the CAHS property until 1917 – the other 3 homes still stand as do a number of the other homes from that 1881 sketch.
If you are curious about the age of your home. More answers can be found in the Washtenaw County offices, while another easy and interesting trick is the Chelsea District Library’s on-line search of the Chelsea Newspapers – back even into the late 1800s.
Just follow this link and type in the house address (just the house number and street – though keep in mind that prior to the early 1900s, there were no house numbers). www.storiesofchelsea.org/historic-newspapers/
