Your first step will be to determine the square and lot number of your house. This information will help you determine some of the basic information about your house.

DC was divided into squares by L'Enfant in 1792. His numbering scheme continues to be used today. Squares are the are of land between two contiguous numbered streets and two contiguous lettered streets. For instance, square 969 is bounded by B, C 10th and 11th Streets, SE (B is now named Independence ave)

To find out your square, go to Washington DC's Assessment database and enter your complete address: Street number, street, type of street (ave, st etc) and quadrant, then click 'Search Now'

You will be shown an overview that includes the square and lot number. Click on this for more information, but it's important to know that much of the data listed is wrong. In particular, the date built is very often wrong - most houses built before 1900 are simply listed as having been built in 1900.

At this point, its time to leave your computer and delve into the world of microfilm. The National Archives as well as the Martin Luther King Washingtoniana section have all DC permits and related documents from 1877-1958 on microfilm. To find your home, go to the index containing the square you're interested in. The index is broken up into streets, so if your home is on square 969 on 11th St between B and C, look for the page marked '11th St between B and C'

There follows all the permits for homes on this stretch. Search these by street number or lot number. The permits will be listed by date and permit number. Write down both of these numbers, as permit numbers are recycled after a number of years.

Permits are stored by date and permit number, so find the microfilm with the date range your permit was issued in. Permits are listed in numerical order.

Note that each permit consists of a number of documents, the permit application, the permit itself, any projection application, possibly an elevation plus a series of daily progress reports.

I highly recommend copying everything (except maybe the progress reports) The names indicated on the permits and related documents will help in finding out more.

If any major changes were made to the building in the time 1877-1958, there will also be permits for these modifications listed in the index. These are worth looking up (the same way as the original permit) as well as copying.

You will need to go to multiple sources to determine who has owned your house.

The quickest source of information is the DC Recorder of Deeds online. All deeds since 1973 are online, and though it costs to get images of the deeds, the basic information is free. Start at the home page and register for free. You can then do the search by square/lot number to find all deeds relating to your property.

Clicking on the 'view detail' icon on the left allows you to see basic information on this deed: grantor, grantee, date, document number and date filed.

To find deeds from 1927-1985, the Washingtoniana has microfiche with this information. You'll need to know your square and lot number to find the data.

For data from 1900-1927, you'll have to go to the recorder of deeds at 515 D Street, NW. Ask at the information desk, and they'll send you to the correct room. Again, knowing your square and lot number will get you the information you need quickly.

For records before 1900, the recorder of deeds is again your source. However, here you'll have to know the names of grantor or grantee to get the information needed. (Caveat: I have not yet done this, so am not totally certain how it works. I'll add information as I get it)

The next step is to find out who lived in your house over the years. Your best friend in this endeavor are the City Directories. These exist from 1822 to 1973, with the ones from 1914-1973 of primary interest, as they have a street index, ie, you can look up a property by its address, to determine who lives there. MLK has most of these directories, although they weren't published every year in later times. Directories contain not just the name of the resident, but usually their jobs as well.

Phone books exist, too, but have much less interesting information.

By now, you have a fairly long list of names: Builder, architect and owner from the permits, occupants from the directories, owners from the deeds. The next step is to find out who the people behind these names were.

The first step is easy: Google and Yahoo. Since the two search engines use different methodologies to search, it makes sense to use both. In particular, Yahoo allows you to search for entire phrases - or, in this case, names - which Google doesnt.

So, search away. It's best to use the full name, ie "Daniel B Guy" when searching. Obviously, if the name is too common, you will have far to many false positives, but adding 'Washington DC' to the search can sometimes help.

A good site to search is Newspaper abstracts which is trying to bring online as much of old newspapers as possible. Search the Washington DC section for a better chance at finding the person you're looking for.

Don't be surprised if there's not much out there. Most records from that time aren't online yet. Instead, see below for a couple other possibilities.

Censuses are performed every 10 years, and the data for all of them up to the 1930 census is freely available. Both the Archives and MLK have these censuses on microfilm. Finding the data is a bit more difficult.

First, you'll need an address for anyone whose data your seeking. Census data is divided into Enumeration Districts (ED) by address. Fortunately, there's help. To get 1910 and 1930 census EDs from an address, use this form Note the cross streets for the address, as well. You'll need them to find the ED.

To get the ED for the 1920 census, use this form.

For the 1900 census, Ancestry.com has a list of all EDs in Washington

The Social Security Administration releases the names - as well as some other information - about every person registered with them after they die. This means that anyone who worked after about 1935 is in this database. Rootsweb has this search engine on the data.

Since the census records only tell you approximately when someone was born (and never when they died) this information can be very handy in tracking down someone's exact birth and death date.

The Washington Post has a search feature going all the way back to 1877. Search here to determine what articles might contain information about the person you're looking for, then find the article at MLK on microfilm.

While searching, be sure to try all combinations: "J H Smith," "John Smith," and "John H Smith." As in the Yahoo search, use quotes - " - to look for exact matches. If you're lucky, the names of your owners and occupants won't be too popular and the hits you get will actually refer to the people you're searching for.

Fortunately, the newspapers back then were pretty thorough in what they covered, so you might find out that someone you're looking for visited a friend or was visited by a friend. Or went on vacation. Or, as in the article shown in the picture, bought a car.

Sometimes the abstract that the Post gives you for free can contain the information you need, more often, you'll have to make a guess as to whether the article is worth searching for or not.

The Washington Star is also on microfilm in the Washingtoniana collection. Unfortunately, no way of searching it exists, either electronically or otherwise.

You've now got a lot of data, names, ages, occupations. The next step is to put all of this together as one coherent narrative. You can look at an example here or just wing it on your own. Scans from permits, city directories or censuses are always good to spice up the report.

Your biggest difficulty will probably be to know when to stop, as each additional piece of information will probably lead naturally to another one. You'll have to decide for yourself what's important to the house and what isn't.