The story so far
The county's assessor listed 1900 as the build year — a placeholder for a parcel too old to remember precisely. The 67-page abstract of title tells a much better story: a land boom and bust, a house that went up somewhere around 1900–1910, and a run of ordinary owners who held onto this ground through two world wars and a depression. Here's the timeline — with a few dates from outside the deed record, set in italics, for context.
The United States patents this quarter-section to James McColloch — three years after Appomattox, with the transcontinental railroad still a year from completion.
Chain of title, entry No. 1 →James deeds the land to his wife, Mary — the consideration recorded verbatim in the abstract, and about as tender as nineteenth-century paperwork gets.
Chain of title, entry No. 2 →The land is split into halves, mortgaged, and resold several times over — Gregory, Rogers, Wells, the Davises, the Waxhams. Nothing remarkable; just Nebraska farmland changing hands through the 1870s.
James and Victoria Waxham — who have reunited both halves of the original patent — sell all 159 acres to George H. Glade for $16,000, roughly ten times the going per-acre rate of the 1870s deeds above.
Chain of title, entry No. 20 →Lincoln is booming — new state capitol, a growing university, rail lines multiplying — and land speculation across Lancaster County is booming with it.
Glade files the plat of "Normal" on May 8, and Lots 11 and 12, Block 29 exist for the first time. By mid-July he has already sold the whole block to M. A. B. Martin for $25,000.
Chain of title, entry No. 30 →A sheriff sells the block for $10 in 1892. A bank ends up holding it after a second sheriff’s sale in 1895. The boom has gone the other way.
Chain of title, entry No. 35 →Falling crop prices and the Panic of 1893 fuel the Populist movement across the Plains. Lincoln’s own William Jennings Bryan delivers his "Cross of Gold" speech at the 1896 Democratic convention.
Charles Anderson, a widower, sells to Charles Gurney — still cheap land.
Chain of title, entry No. 43 →Gurney sells to Frank Barnes — roughly seventeen times the 1900 price for the same described land. Somewhere in this decade, a house goes up.
Chain of title, entry No. 46 →A Lincoln heating contractor liens Frank Barnes over unpaid work — proof a heated structure now stands here.
Chain of title, entry No. 52 →Europe goes to war that summer. The United States is still three years from joining it.
The U.S. enters World War I in 1917. The Spanish flu pandemic follows in 1918–19, killing an estimated 675,000 Americans.
Frank Barnes sells to Clinton Noble for $4,500.
Chain of title, entry No. 54 →The 18th Amendment takes effect. Wartime farm prices collapse, and Midwest agriculture spends the rest of the decade in a slump the rest of the country doesn’t feel yet.
Clinton Noble sells to Joseph and Nancy Dickinson for $6,500.
Chain of title, entry No. 57 →A deed in May 1924 still calls this place "Normal." One the following spring already calls it "now a part of Lincoln" — the annexation happened somewhere in between.
Chain of title, entry No. 61 →The house changes hands quickly — Sudderth, Easley, Brooks, Hofmann — mostly for nominal sums "and exchange," more like family or trade transactions than open-market sales.
The stock market crashes that October. The Great Depression begins.
Frank and Margaret Hofmann mortgage the property to Nebraska Central Building & Loan.
Chain of title, entry No. 67 →Drought and dust storms batter the Plains through the decade; FDR’s New Deal remakes Washington.
War returns to Europe in 1939. The United States joins after Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Per a later affidavit, Joseph Dickinson’s widow conveys the house to Albert and Laura Cook in March — right at the start of the postwar housing boom.
Chain of title, entry No. 70 →That October, Eagle Home Insulation Co. insulates the house — done before the family’s first winter in it.
Chain of title, entry No. 69 →A notarized affidavit confirms that Nancy E., Nancy Elizabeth, and "Elizabeth, widow" are all the same person — genealogical housekeeping for the county record.
Chain of title, entry No. 70 →The Cook family refinances the property.
Chain of title, entry No. 80 →The Misle Real Estate Partnership — four brothers — mortgages the property for $8,500.
Chain of title, entry No. 96 →Mark Loseke reroofs the house, then converts the garage from a flat roof to a pitched one — the garage’s roofline as it stands today.
Permit B9603105 →Mary Jackson owns the property and permits a portable greenhouse in the yard.
Permit B0001860 →New foundation, new addition, a full rewire and repipe, two roofs, a finished basement, and a 2025–26 kitchen — the whole story is on the improvements page.
For the record
Every entry the timeline above draws from, transcribed from Abstract of Title No. 76736 — Lots Eleven (11) and Twelve (12) in Block Twenty Nine (29) in Normal (now in the City of Lincoln), Lancaster County, Nebraska, located upon the S.E. 1/4 of S.E. 1/4 of Sec. 32, Twp. 10 N., R. 7 E. Certified through February 13, 1930 (entries 1–68) by Verne Hedge, Bonded Abstracter, Lincoln, Nebraska, George W. Ellsworth, Bonded Abstracter, Ben Parker, Bonded Abstracter, Nebraska Title Company.
Before this ownership
The city's records reach back past the current owners. Two roof permits and a greenhouse — which is also how we know the garage roofline was changed in 1999.
| Year | Work | Applicant | Permit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Resheet / reroof | Mark T. Loseke | B9603105 |
| 1999 | Pitched roof installed over the flat garage roof | Loseke Contracting | B9902647 |
| 2000 | Portable greenhouse | Mary Jackson | B0001860 |