Kristen Green in her Grove Avenue home (Photo by Shawnee Custalow)
When my husband and I were looking to buy a home in Richmond’s historic Fan district in 2014, we asked our real estate agent to look for a “grandma house.”
Jason and I wanted an old house with original charm that we could fix up, not a house that had already been renovated to someone else’s taste. We preferred a house with wallpaper we could strip and old carpet we could pull up to reveal hardwood floors.
We saw potential in a stately three-story home on Grove Avenue. The previous owner, Nell Louise Crawford, had lived most of her life in the house, which she told friends her paternal grandfather had built in 1910. The brick home was larger than we had envisioned — and more of a project — but it met many of our other qualifications. It had a generous front porch, dentil molding throughout, several sets of pocket doors and eight intricate fireplaces. We were smitten.
We also were intimidated. The kitchen hadn’t been updated since the ’60s, the bay window was sagging, and the roof needed to be replaced. We wanted to do a lot of the work ourselves, but this house called for a contractor. While Jason and I walked through the house one final time before making an offer, our real estate agent, Kelly Trask, thumbed through photo albums and came across a picture of Crawford as a young woman.
The house — and the photo of Crawford — became an inspiration for House Story, a monthly house tour that Trask created with Kathryn Oti and Molly Todd, who also love old houses. The free monthly tours share the stories of homes that are quirky, have historic significance, contain beautiful art collections and have undergone wonderful renovations.
Before our home was featured on the House Story tour in October after a renovation by VMAX, I set out to research its history and its longtime owner. I discovered that Crawford’s paternal grandfather, Charles A. Crawford, worked in construction, and he and his wife, Ellen Louisa “Nellie” Wightman, were living in the house by 1911. Born in 1918, Nell Crawford moved in along with her family — father Charles E. Crawford, mother Lillian Matthews and brother Ned — by 1930.
Nell Crawford (Photo courtesy Jeff Hathaway)
Crawford continued living in the house on Grove Avenue as a young woman, and when her grandfather died in 1940, the house went to her father. Her brother died during World War II, and her fiance reportedly did, too. She stayed in the house and cared for her parents as they aged, inheriting the home from her father upon his death in 1958.
For years, she rented rooms to Virginia Commonwealth University students, inviting them to join her for dinner prepared by a cook each evening. A favorite male boarder played the piano in the front room while Crawford and other boarders gathered around. Another student, Ruth Nelson, stayed for decades, marrying and raising her children in Crawford’s home.
Over the years, Crawford worked as a medical laboratory technician for several doctors’ offices, and she was a longtime member of Grace and Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, where she volunteered at the soup kitchen on Fridays. Stacie Vanchieri, who lived next door to Crawford for years, adored her neighbor.
“She was very young at heart,” Vanchieri says. “She was always smiling, always laughing, always telling stories.”
Crawford died in the home in 2013, at the age of 95. I think she would appreciate that its new owners have daughters who will grow up in the house, just as she did, and they’ll be sharing stories of the family that made it a home for more than a century.
Find details on future House Story tours on Facebook.
Tips for Uncovering Your House’s Story
Use the internet to research your house’s history:
- Search city and county property records for the names of previous owners.
- Search the obituaries of former owners. This may tell you where they worked, what churches they attended and the names of any living relatives.
- Search the owners’ names on ancestry.com — you’ll find birth and death certificates, annual census counts, and listings in city directories. (You can get a free trial membership or access at some libraries.)
- Search the Library of Virginia’s Virginia Heritage archives for city building permits issued from 1907 to 1976.
Researching offline:
- Contact relatives listed in the obituary to learn more. Talk with your older neighbors who might have lived in the area for a long time.
