Newspaper searching can fill out the story of a house. You might find records of a sale, or even (if you're lucky) information about its construction. You might also find out details from the lives of those who live there, since papers used to identify people with their address. Good or bad - an engagement, an arrest - these details bring the place to life.
Search using the street number and name in quotes. Sometimes it's best to omit Street/Ave/etc. So, for example "472 Jersey" would bring up stories about the Main Library here.
Start your Evening/Jersey Journal search at this link.
Search the Jersey City News at this link.
Search other 19th century newspapers at this link.
Research the history of your house, your block or your neighborhood using historic maps from the mid-19th through mid-20th century. Search this collection of high-quality color scans of insurance atlases by address or map browse. We are happy that many of the historic atlases in the New Jersey Room collection that are inaccessible at present are now available for our patrons online here.
Census records allow us to “put people in houses” in the years that the censuses were taken. Who lived there, what relations they were to each other, where they and their parents were born and what occupation they were engaged in – these elements add life to the history of a house. Up until a few years ago, this process required consulting maps and sometimes municipal meeting minutes for district boundaries, and scrolling through microfilm of the census sheets. Thanks to data structuring work by Steve Morse and digitization hosting by the Latter Day Saints (and others), the process can also be done from any computer with Internet access. It is a bit complex and the last step still requires scrolling through images, but when successful the results are rewarding.
The attached document describes how to use the tool created by Steve Morse and his team of volunteers, found at https://stevemorse.org/census/unified.html
Deed research can be started by finding the most recent sale, and the book and page on which it is recorded by the County.
That information is publicly available by clicking here.
Until recently, deed research had to be carried out on-site at the County Records Office. Over the past several years, the county has been digitizing deeds - at present the online records go back to the 1950s. There are several ways to search, but the most effective seems to be by book and page. Ideally, each deed will list the location of the prior deed, enabling you to trace ownership back through history. Older records still need to be searched at the Hudson County Records Office at 257 Cornelison. The oldest records, prior to 1840 when Hudson County was established, are held by Bergen County.
Online property records searching begins at this link.
