Asheville Man Finds Papers From 1920s In Home

*This would be pretty neat*

Found documents give glimpse of Depression | CITIZEN-TIMES.com | Asheville Citizen-Times

WEST ASHEVILLE – Every house has a history, but you usually don't find a big chunk of it tucked under the attic insulation.
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But that's exactly what happened in November to David Wall, a West Asheville real estate agent who recently bought the sturdy, two-story wood frame home at 71 Garden Circle with his wife, Alice Powell. Checking the insulation, he first found a bundle of newspapers.

“I'm just a lover of history, and I thought I was grabbing a bunch of old newspapers,” Wall said, standing in the home's kitchen. “But under the newspapers was another bundle, a bunch of old papers tied together with a string.”

The resident's old letters, bills, receipts and canceled checks provide a snapshot of the years 1927-31, from the good times when the family could afford a nice record player to the bad times when the letters from creditors and lawyers starting coming in. Ultimately, the home was foreclosed on — the yellowed, stiff newspaper clipping announcing the foreclosure is among the papers Wall found.

“I felt odd going through this stuff,” Wall said, a pile of old papers, some of them singed on the edges from some unexplained fire, spread before him. “I felt like I was digging through someone's personal trash.”

Among the items was a music class workbook signed by its owner, a boy who lived in the home named Albert H. Bier. Wall Googled the name, and the only finding was a man listed in Raleigh.

“Within 20 minutes of finding this stuff, I was talking to a 92-year-old man telling me about the rose bush climbing up the back of my home,” Wall said. “What a trip of technology.”