When we bought our house, the real estate ads, the bank, the county, everyone, had our house listed as built in 1940. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it, but the more I learned about architecture, and styles, and the history of Centralia, the more that date didn’t seem right to me. Our house looked like a Craftsman. A very simply put together one, a not quite genuine one, maybe, but Craftsmanesque, nonetheless. Which would date it, most likely, between 1910 and 1930. So, I was stuck trying to figure out why our house looked older, but belonged to a younger decade. Nothing about it made sense.

When we started remodeling, we found even more surprises: a door framed in a bedroom which opened up ten, maybe fifteen feet, in front of the neighbor’s; a thick cedar beam around the entire perimeter; and balloon framing, among other things.

Checking the country records, we found out that the neighbor’s house that door was facing was built in 1930. So, if our house wasn’t built until ten years later, why would they put a door there?

The thick cedar beam around the perimeter indicated that the house was once on a post and beam foundation, not the current cinder block one, which, again, made it seem older than 1940.

And the balloon framing… sure, they might have used it occasionally during that time period, but it was popular much earlier.

So many questions. And only one answer: 1940.

But what did we know anyway?

Then, in the summer of 2006, as we were working outside, a man in a pick-up stopped and asked if we lived there. Well, yes, we said, we’re the owners. Did you know your house used to be the carriage house for the house up on the hill? he asked, and pointed to the huge, ancient run-down Victorian in back of us. It was moved down, flipped around, and turned into a residence in 1936, he continued. My grandmother has a picture of her standing in front of it. She was friends with the daughter of the people who owned it. You know it was in the Washington family, don’t you?

(House on hill)

Uh, no, we did not know. The earliest owner we knew about was an elderly lady named Mrs. Sibley, who moved out sometime in the late nineteen eighties or early nineties, and the house had seen two owners since then. The county had no prior records, and there was certainly no mention of the house ever belonging to anyone in the Washington family, whose namesake, George Washington, (not THE George Washington, President of the United States, but a black man who left the mid-west to escape discrimination and find a better life) founded Centralia.

I’m sure you can find records at the library, the man suggested.

So Brian and I spent hours at the library trying to find evidence that what this man said was true. But there was nothing. It made sense that our house had at one time been a carriage house, however, and that it was probably moved to where it now sits from another location. The construction of it at least made that likely. As for everything else, the man said, well, we weren’t buying it. We wanted to, believe me, but we wanted proof.

When we replaced the siding on the front of the house we found further evidence of its origins as a carriage house. It was clear that barn doors once adorned the side facing the street. Where they were removed, different siding covers the hole.



I started thinking that perhaps our former carriage house was moved to its present location in 1940, or at least converted into a residence at that time, which would explain the county’s records. Then, in the fall, we were visited by the assessor. While he was taking measurements of our addition, I told him the rumors I’d heard regarding our house. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was moved down here, he said. A lot of these houses were. What about your records, I asked? They say this place was built, or converted, in 1940. But it looks older than that. It does, he agreed, then went on to say that the county lost every single one of their records in a fire in the early 1930s. It took them about ten years to revisit every house in town, and when they did, they approximated the age of the residence.

Now we had confirmation that our house was more than likely built prior to 1940, even prior to 1930, and that it was likely a carriage house that had been moved. But what of the rumors regarding George Washington? Did we dare believe that our house had once been property of Centralia’s founder?

We may be one step closer in discovering the truth. A few months ago, the neighbors came over to help us lift the truck topper onto the back of the truck. While they were here, we gave them a tour of our renovations. It was during that tour that the son told us he remembered reading an article in the town’s newspaper about our street, how George Washington owned a large house around the corner, and had buried gold in his carriage house. The gold has never been found.

Whether we live in George Washington’s former carriage house or not, we will continue to look for the truth. And that gold…


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