The Pollard house in 1930.

I have located the house that Nathan Pollard lived in when they lived in Gainesville Texas and the house still stands. How I found the house is an interesting story itself. In the 1930 census report Nathan Pollard lists his address as 703 Eldridge Street, Gainesville, Texas. That’s the same address listed in the phone book at the time, the problem is that address today is just a vacant lot. Me and Janet went to look at it and even took some pictures. Later on I found an old street map of Gainesville from 1932 and I decided to look up the house just to get an idea of the size of the house. One problem though, the address didn’t exist on the map! I compared the map to the street today in amazement on how little it has changed. I mean every house pretty much matched up. Even the vacant lot that I thought the Pollard house once stood on was a vacant lot in 1932.

My first thought was maybe the census and phone book made a mistake. If they did though, how. I noticed that there where only three houses on Eldridge at the time. The addresses where 901, 917 and 1013. Well on the census report someone named Cicero Spires lived on 917, leaving 901 and 1013 as the only other two addresses. Finally for some reason I decided to look at a earlier street map. One from 1922. The addresses had changed!

In 1922 the addresses on Eldridge street went 701,703, 705 and 807. The house with the address 701 was gone by 1932, and 703 became 901, 705 because 917 and house 807 became 1013. Based on this it would make since that Nathan listed 703 as his address since that’s what it was before. Anyways I looked on google maps and the house still stands and is a private residence. I plan to make a trip soon to get a closer look. I’m really fascinated about how small the house is for ten people. Its pretty serial to look at it though and think 89 years ago my grandpa and great grandpa use to live in this house. They saw the same walls I am seeing now. They looked out and saw the same street that I am looking at….