Sharon Jones' tips for researching your home's history:

ikki K. Harris / AJC (ENLARGE)

An iron butterfly, the symbol for Inman Park, welcomes people to Sharon and Craig Jones' historic home. The couple documented the history of the home as a way to understand its past &mdash and to help gain a valuable tax credit.

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1. Use the city directories, census information and Atlanta Journal-Constitution archives to learn who lived in your house. Remember that the city directories won't tell you who owned the house, just who lived there. For ownership information, you have to look at county deed records.

2. Atlanta changed all its street numbers in 1926 so if your house predates that year, you'll need to go to the 1927 City Directory where both house numbers (old and new) are documented. Then research before 1926 with the original house number.

3. To find the descendants of the people who lived in your house, use genealogy resources such as ancestry.com, familysearch.org, cyndislist.com and rootsweb.com.

4. Try the Social Security death index available through genealogy sources like those above. The index will tell you the county that the person lived in when they died. If you go to the probate court of that county, there will probably be a will and the heirs will be listed. You can get the children's married names from this document.

5. Use the online archives at ajc.com to search by name or by address. That will give you other information about your house including social news, obituaries and business news.

6. The Atlanta History Center has photographs, maps and plats of your neighborhood, files on people, files on your neighborhood, and building permits. When you find out who the builder was, plug him to the ajc.com archives and find other houses he built in the neighborhood. www.atlantahistorycenter.org.

7. Go to the deed room of the county and do a title search to know who owned your home.

8. Look into neighborhood and church archives. People usually went to church nearby and you'd be surprised at what you can find in their records.

9. Take oral histories. They may not have the story exactly right, but there's always a kernel of truth in what you will hear.

10. Go to the state archives. They have the census information, photographs and files on neighborhoods. www.sos.ga.gov/archives.

11. Do a physical search of your house. Pull back baseboards and look behind the mantle. You'll find old construction details and hints about paint colors and wood finishes. You might even find a photo that fell behind the woodwork. Your attic and basement can reveal lots of clues as well.

12. The Georgia State University library's Special Collections department, www.library.gsu.edu/spcoll, has lots of resources including aerial photographs of Atlanta that were taken in 1949. www.library.gsu.edu/maps/aerialatlas1949/index.htm. The map is a fun way to see what your house looked like in 1949.

& 13. Look at the Web site for the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov. They've got an 1892 bird's eye map of Atlanta that's surprisingly accurate.

14. Visit www.galileo.usg.edu as a guest user. You'll find a digital library and access to the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps that document each structure in Atlanta and the materials it was built from.

15. www.atlantatimemachine.com has many old photographs listed by street name.

16. Go on a walking tour with the Atlanta Preservation Center. They cover all the major Atlanta city neighborhoods. www.preserveatlanta.com.

The following information is available at the Atlanta History Center:

1. Atlanta City Directories: they have both original copies and microfilm. Start by checking your house number in the 1927 City Directory. Streets were renumbered that year and most house numbers changed. If your home was built before 1927, you will need both numbers.

The City Directories also contain a wealth of other information. One section lists all the streets and identifies residents by house number. Once you know the name of a resident, you can check the alphabetical listing of Atlantans, and find out a lot about that person and his/her household. By using the City Directories you can track changes in ownership, find out in what kind of business the earlier residents made their living, the names of their children and many other bits of information.

2. Building permits are on microfilm beginning with about 1893. Finding them can be a bit tricky as some of the earlier permits are listed by location at the beginning of the numerical list ("East Fifth Street" is an example, and you have to check East Fifth as well as Fifth). Remember, if your home was built before 1927, use the earlier street number. Also, Atlanta has a habit of changing the names of streets; the library has a list of them you can check. Once you find the building permit for your house, you can print it from the microfilm. You will now know who the original owner was, if there was an architect, the name of the builder, when work began and when the house was finished - a lot of information.

3. Check for "personality" or "business" files after you get some information about former residents of your house. Also check the Visual Catalog list for pictures of your neighborhood, and ask the History Center personnel to help you access Garrett's Necrology to see if you can locate the obituaries of former residents. There are copies of both the Atlanta Constitution and Journal on microfilm, information files about the various neighborhoods, and some subdivision plat maps.

4. Other resources include the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, which are also on microfilm (there are also some original copies as well) and can give you a picture of your neighborhood over the years. You can get details about your home such as the number of stories, porches, exterior materials and outbuildings from the Sanborn maps, and you can also track changes to the building.

The Fulton County Courthouse has copies of deeds, and some plat maps. Other sources to check include the main Atlanta Public Library, Emory University, Georgia State University, Georgia Tech and the Georgia Archives. Finally Ken Thomas, formerly the historian at the Historic Preservation Division (HPD), the State Historic Preservation Office, has written a detailed handout on researching a building in Georgia, and you can request a copy. HPD has files on Historic Districts, architects, and an excellent library. You can call 404-651-5911 for more information and to make an appointment to use their archives. Good luck and happy hunting!

Source: Bamby Ray & Marion Ellis of Ray & Associates, Historic Preservation Consultants

Atlanta History Center operating hours are Tuesday-Saturday from 10am to 4pm, and their telephone number is 404-814-4040. Personnel there will help researchers who are unfamiliar with the extensive amount of information about Atlanta and those who lived there. Use of the archives is free, and there is plenty of parking available.

How to get historic home tax credit

Here's help from the Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources:

For more information on Georgia's Historic Preservation Division two tax programs for rehabilitated historic properties, log onto www.gashpo.org and click on "Tax Incentives."

Historian Ken Thomas worked for many years in the Historic Preservation Division guiding property owners in researching their historic homes and buildings. Preparing the paperwork and making plans for renovations to quality for the state's tax programs includes documenting the home's history and its architectural significance.

Thomas says, "Detailed research into the history of a historic house or building involves more than determining its construction date and its style. It is important to know something about the neighborhood and era in which it was built, and for whom it was built. What was the owner's role in the community? What was his or her occupation? Was the house built for a prominent family, or a working-class household? Was it built for speculation? Was a trained architect involved or was the design purchased from a mail-order house? What social events took place there? In order to do an appropriate restoration it is important to know how the house looked originally."

Thomas' 14-page paper, "Documenting a Historic Structure in Atlanta," is a thorough guide to the process, and is available online at www.gashpo.org under Historic Resources/Documenting and Identifying Structures.