Ancestry Saturday: 113 Years Early For a Bad Place To Live

The "A" marks the now-dubious address in Cleveland.  The street at the top of the screen has ancestral connections from 113 years ago.

Our ancestors can't have known back then what we know now when they made choices where to live. 

If you could, it's doubtful anyone would want to have lived in the neighborhood where the horrible abductions in Cleveland took place.  2207 Seymour Avenue will never be an address where anyone will want to live again.  The horrors are too much to want to conjure up every day. 

Go back 113 years, though, and that's the neighborhood where my Great Grandfather Andrew Baker lived.  It was an ethnic German neighborhood then.

The City Directory had him there in 1899 and 1900 after his service in the Spanish-American War.  Wade Ave, one block parallel to the north, was the street he lived on before he left for the Pittsburgh area sometime before 1905. 

His actual dwelling, converted after numbering in 1906, would have put him at 3511 Wade Avenue, a home that long-ago gave way to Interstate 90 right of way.  That's three blocks west and one full block north of the now-dubious address.

Who could have known?  No one.