From the records available, we determined the house had been built in 1859.  Later I found a map of the Terrace Park (Camden or Columbia Twp.) area dated 1860.  There were 6 or 7 house locations noted, one being 429 Elm.  This was before the railroad came through and St. Thomas Church was built so the land owned by 429 Elm extended east to the Little Miami River [RR had come through so perhaps doubtful] and north towards Wooster (Chillicothe) Pike [???].  When Terrace Park was platted for development, the property became smaller.  At one point, Bill Petit, our neighbor who did title searches tried to look up the exact date.  Unfortunately, the Hamilton County courthouse fire of 1879 destroyed all the records of that time.  

Between the time the house was built and we moved in, there were several owners.  One owner built the Petit house for their daughter's wedding present.  (Check with Peggy Petit)  When the railroad came through, the piece of property next to the railroad bridge was built up and over time became a teahouse.  

Sometime in the 1920's there was a fire at 429 Elm.  The house was three stories and according to Red Eveland, son of Harry Eveland, who watched the fire, the third story was burned off.  I don't know who reconstructed the house then but Charley Cornish, who lived on Wooster Pike, did the remodeling of the house into a two family duplex.  Charley said that during the construction he found a hole on the back of the kitchen which he claimed was caused by an errant shell which exploded from a munitions train during a trip from downtown Cincinnati to Camp Dennison.  (Harry Eveland dismissed that as a myth.)

We purchased the house in its duplex format from the Thomas's.  The structure was sound enough that rooms could be changed to suit personal preferences.  Before we moved into the house, we had to have a door framed in from the first to second floor in order to avoid having to go outside.  That gave the house two front doors.  We did the usual remodeling including stripping all the doors to their old pine.  We remodeled a 1920's kitchen in the 1960's and added a bathroom on the 2nd floor.  Two bathrooms for nine people just didn't cut it.  We didn't touch the stone foundation even though it had a small leak.  

When we moved in, the back yard and field over to the tracks were in flower and vegetable gardens.  We converted the back field into grass.  I managed to kill the flower gardens in short order through benign neglect.  The yard itself with a patio constructed of river rock was easy to maintain if you didn't get excited about being perfect.  We lost a magnificent maple in the middle of the patio in the '70s due to a lightning strike but not before we had any number of elegant parties there - even when it rained.  

429 Elm was a comfortable house in which to raise a large family.  The 25 years Connie and I and our children lived there were delightful."