Since the house is old (for around here) I was curious to see if I could discover any of the history of the house. I found an owner from the 90s and reached out via email. The gentleman called back last night. They bought the house in the early 90s and renovated it because it had been boarded up for a long time and was run down. That's why the HVAC all shows as having been installed in 1991.
He advised that when they moved in, the upstairs was an unfinished attic, and they finished it out so their kids would have rooms and more space. He said it was using old tree stumps for piers so they had the foundation dealt with. Downstairs was shiplap with large sheets of a cardboard like material over the shiplap. When they pulled that off, they found something that said (this guy had an amazing memory to remember this from 30 years ago), "his house built by W E Ermis Oct 1924"
I thought I'd try to search for any "Ermis" family in the area, and found a fair amount with the best stuff being on findagrave.com. That lead me to a William J Ermis who would have been about 18 in Oct of 1924, but his father was William F Ermis who would have been about 43 at that time which seemed to me to be about the right age to be building a house. On the findagrave website, someone had taken a picture of the gravestone for William and his wife. And the gravestone has a photo at the top.
The house has 3 photos in it, two are before and after the renovation in the 90s and the third is of an old couple.
I'm pretty sure that I've found the original builder and his family. I'll look them up and reach out at some point to see if they have any more info.
I also found out that someone since the renovation has taken a wall down between two rooms downstairs. We had no thoughts or plans to put that back in place, but after talking to the missus, she's considering putting a wall back. The room is long and narrow, and having 2 rooms would give me a place to work, an "office" of sorts.
And I think it may be possible to get and use a 5G connection for work if I can't find any wired high-speed Internet.