My father, the history buff

Growing up, I was told that history has value and mid-century modern architecture
should probably be my favorite home style.

Chloe Houser

Oct. 1, 2020

The biggest cowboy boots in Washington stand ​in a park in Seattle, Washington​. I know this

because my father took me there. ​There was never a vacation where we didn’t stop at one

historical location when we were with Dad. Whether it

was stopping by a stranger's home to take pictures from

the outside, where he claimed “I swear it’s a historical

home!” Dad never failed to embarrass my awkward

adolescent self. This was the everyday life of having a

historian as a father.

However, this wasn’t always my father's path. My

father had plans to become an architect, attending the

University of Idaho for his Bachelor’s degree but plans changed due to failing physics, only

about three times. My mother met my father in college, and her own father was a professor at

University of Idaho. She recalls telling my Dad to go talk to him after learning of his difficulties

in school, and he was advised to get a general studies degree so he could graduate on time, and

then apply into a master’s program in historic preservation. He did, and he headed to Eastern

Michigan University and achieved his master’s degree in architectural history.

His interest in history stemmed from my grandmother, Joanne Houser. She loved finding

antiques and fixing them up, so loving old historical things was in his blood. My father

remembers “hopping in the back of our tiny little car and going to all these garage sales with her.

She would pile up the car as deep as she could and then come back and clean and restyle

everything.”

To my father, it was logical to connect architecture and history and try to make a career out of it.

He started working as a historical society volunteer in Moscow, Idaho, while attending the

University of Idaho. While in graduate school, he worked at the Henry Ford Museum in

Dearborn, Michigan, and landed a job as a historic preservation planner in Bend, Oregon fresh

out of school. Since then, he has been working in Olympia as the Washington State Architectural

Historian for 19 years, running the state and national register programs and working on public

outreach about architectural history.

Trying to find family history isn’t too hard thanks to Dad. As soon as I mentioned writing a piece

on family history, he informed me he’s been researching

the Houser family for 30 years. In graduate school, he

was learning a lot about other people’s history but

realized he didn’t know a lot about his own. Throughout

the past years, a lot of Houser family members have

passed away and he wanted to find out all the information

he could before it was too late.

Based on my father's research, the majority of the American Houser family is from Pennsylvania

but as you go back even further you start to see German roots where “Hausser” is changed to

“Houser” once my family immigrated to the U.S in 1770.

There was a long rumored family myth that there were Native American ties deeply rooted in our

history. After looking through ancestry.com, U.S. census records and immigration papers, my

father ended up finding zero connections to any Native American tribes.

I wouldn’t change my childhood for anything. Although I hate to admit it; my father’s love for

history inspires me to learn and most importantly, look for the most mid-century modern home I

can find when I’m looking for my first home as an adult. The rest of this story… well, its history.