I would like to contact the Samuel Day family (ancestors) to let them know about the house. Anyone know them? Please try and pass this information along!
Researching on ancestry's website today to see who was living in the Ridge Road house, I could access the 1910, 1920, and 1930 censuses. Fascinating. And to see Harry Cooley (and his parents and family) just down the road on the farm in the census from 1920 onwards...it feels like time travel.
1910: Samuel Day (47), Wife Carrie (Caroline Pray) (36), Ruth (10), Roland (9), Margaret (6), Lester (1)
1920: Samuel Day (56), Wife Carrie passed away in 1917, Ruth (20), Roland (18), Marguerite (16), Lester (11)
And ten years later when Lester, the youngest child would have been 21, Sam was remarried and already had three children with his new young wife (40 years his junior):
1930: Samuel Day (67), Wife Elizabeth (27), Mary (9), Russell (7), Dorothy (5), and nephew Robert Pray (his first wife's relation) as a hired man (23)
I found a photo of Sam Day in the newspaper when he died in 1953, the same year Harry Cooley bought the Day house. Sam would have been 90.
1910 census:
1920 census:
1930 census:
Fascinating. Your research makes the period come to life. (And it makes me want to write a novel.)