RESEARCHING YOUR HOUSE

The Times-Picayune Saturday, June 12, 2010 R. Stephanie Bruno

The New Orleans Library has a terrific guide to researching a New Orleans home's history -- a potentially ambitious project in a city founded nearly 300 years ago.

Titled "Sources for Researching the History of Your House (Or Other Building) in New Orleans," it's available online at http://nutrias.org/~nopl/house2/intro.htm

Here's a brief outline of steps and resources, paraphrased from the library's online guide.

w	STEP 1: Find the "Conveyance Office Book" number and "Folio" (or page) number on which the most recent sale of the property has been recorded. These number codes will open the lock to finding older information.

If you are researching your own house, check your legal records for the code: For example, COB 409/FOL 361 refers to Conveyance Office Book volume 409 and Folio (page) 361.

If you don't have your records or are researching a different house, go to the assessors' website (http://www.nolaassessor.com/) and look up the address of the property. On the property data page, you'll see entries next to "Book" and "Folio" -- those are the COB and FOL numbers you'll need.

w	STEP 2: To find the chain of title, visit the city's Conveyance Division (formerly Conveyance Office) of Civil District Court at 1340 Poydras St., 4th floor.

Armed with the COB/FOL, ask to see the appropriate book and a staff member will provide it. Find the page or folio, and you'll be able to collect information on who sold the property to whom, for what price and when, and what notary officiated.

You'll also find a reference to the previous conveyance, which you will then use to access a copy of a second book, and so on, using the COB/FOL found on each entry to develop a history of ownership of the property.

w	STEP 3: Visit the Notarial Archives (1340 Poydras St., Suite 360), where, armed with the names of notaries and dates of sales found in the Conveyance Office Books, you will be able to access actual acts of sale for each transaction.

You will search first by notary, and then by date.

Acts of sale sometimes include surveys and other information not available elsewhere.

Also at the Notarial Archives, you may find building contracts that can tell you when your home was built or renovated, and "Plan Book Plans," 19th and early 20th century watercolors that might depict what your house looked like.

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