Consultant says job has good, bad parts [The Daily Star-Journal, Warrensburg, Mo.]

Nov. 29--WARRENSBURG -- Historic preservation consultant Deb Sheals, Columbia, said her documentation on seven houses in the 200 block of East Grover Street will be reviewed by the city Historic Preservation Commission, sent to the State Historic Preservation Office, then sent to the National Register of Historic Places for a final decision.

Sheals said paperwork needed to request acceptance to the register is the hard part of consulting.

Grover Street Victorian Historic District is her third Warrensburg documentation job. She also prepared information for the Jones Mule Barn and Magnolia Mills nominations.

The State Historical Society library in Columbia is a valuable resource, Sheals said. The Internet also offers resources, she said, especially ancestry.com.

"A lot of things are online now," she said.

Sheals said she uses Sanborn insurance maps, plat maps, atlases, gazetteers, county histories, architectural histories and census records that tell who lived where, which is valuable because addresses change through time, she said.

House and building plan books also help, she said.

"They were in use since colonial days. There was an explosion of plans" in the 19th century, she said.

Many standard plans could be found through local lumber yards, she said.

Sheals said she uses information from the Johnson County historical library and property documentation prepared in the 1980s by Tom Christopher and Roger Maserang. Bill and Annette Scroggs, whose house is within the proposed district, also provided information, she said.

There is more work to do in Warrensburg, she said.

Sheals said her master's degree in historic preservation from University of Missouri-Columbia, two decades of experience and professional registration in compliance with state and federal standards qualifies her as a consultant.

"It can be fun," she said. "I see what I can discover."

___

(c)2011 The Daily Star-Journal (Warrensburg, Mo.)

Visit The Daily Star-Journal (Warrensburg, Mo.) at www.dailystarjournal.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services