Last July, my intrepid partner in crime DD and I decided to look into our more recent ancestry, closer to home. My great-grandparents, John and Alice (Holtzapple) Hilyard, lived for a time in Muncie, Indiana. They are the featured family on my cover page, and I believe that photo was taken shortly before they moved to Muncie. We still have some family there and met up with local cousin CC to investigate.
Some years ago, I located an address for John and Alice in a 1913 city directory: 1802 E. 12th Street in Muncie. I ran right over to Google Maps and was disappointed to see this area is a commercial zone with some buildings and parking lots there now. I asked cousin CC about it at the time, and she confirmed the house no longer existed. The red balloon on the right shows the address; I'm leaving in Heekin Park for further reference. Note that 12th Street is now called Memorial Drive. Reminder: click on any image to enlarge it.
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| Google Maps View of 1802 E. 12th Street Today |
I was able to find an ad in a 1912 newspaper showing this property, with 7 rooms, was for rent.
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| The Star Press 10 Mar 1912 |
We can assume they took the house for rent, as the 1913 City Directory is based on the prior year's residents. The directories were printed every two years, and the Hilyards were there again in 1915, 1917, and 1919. During this time period, John Hilyard worked as a carpenter for Ball Bros., famous manufacturer of Ball glass jars.
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| 1913 Muncie City Directory |
And that's where I left it. With the house gone, what more could I learn?
Until 2022, when I started to prepare for our trip that is. I thought I should revisit the records and see what I might have missed. Since we were going to be in the county seat, I should look up the deed to this property while we were there. Checking online for information before heading out, I found the Delaware county deeds were already digitized and available for free online! Check out the wonderful
Muncie Public Library for more.
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| Delaware County, Indiana Deed Book 161 p. 80 |
Rather than a street address, the deed gives a lot number: Lot 10 in block 56 of Goshorn and Lupton's subdivision. I noticed John and Alice bought the property (the one they had lived in for 4 or 5 years as renters) from the owners for $1 and other consideration. The sellers' names are not familiar to me. I don't know why the Hilyards got the house for a dollar, and this is an area I should explore further.
There are many historical maps available online, so I thought I would look up this specific lot number. I found a great high-resolution map from
Ball State University's website and was able to locate lot 10 Block 56, outlined in blue here.
If you compare this to the Google Maps screenshot above, there is a big discrepancy. Using Heekin Park as a reference point, the current location of 1802 is east of the park and on the same street. But at the time the Hilyards lived there, it was
west of the park, and a block down!
I dug through my photos and found some pictures I believed to be John and Alice's Muncie home, included here.
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John and Alice Hilyard
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| Seated, Alice Hilyard. Daughter Tessie on far right, son Vaughn standing next to Tessie |
Armed with this new information, I set out with cousins DD and CC to do some recognizance work. We cruised up and down the street, parking and peering at the current homes, trying to determine which one was "ours". While we were there, we convinced ourselves it was this one, and that it had been added on to considerably:
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| Oops, wrong house! |
However, after we got home and really thought it over, this house was located on lot 11, right next door to lot 10.
Now we are convinced that the house John and Alice Hilyard is still standing, and looks like this:
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| Would they mind if we cut some bushes back so we could see the place better?? |
The east side of the house is totally obscured by bushes and trees, and that is the angle the old photos would have been taken from. But if you imagine it without the front porch, it has the abrupt cut-off of the front as in the old photos. We didn't try to take a lot of photos of this house because were focused on the one next door, but I feel certain this is it based on the old city map, and that the photos I have are of this home.
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| Current location using Beacon website, courtesy of cousin DD |
Lesson here: just because you have an address for a location doesn't mean it translates to the current address. Streets get renamed. Dig a little deeper, find some old maps. Check deeds for more information.
