Our house is old, but how old?

When we bought our home, we were told the house was built in 1860.  While we have not yet tracked down the records at the court house to see that date for ourselves, we have been on the search at the house for any clues to the age of the house.  On a later post I will give a more fully elaborated discussion of this, but the oldest date/item we have found so far is this corner piece of a newspaper - from September 1869.

This was found on the wall, just under the plaster, covering a brick, on Zac's wall just below the ceiling.  The metal casing running vertical next to it is wire-guard over his electrical wiring (it has blue painters tape on it.)
Maybe you can see it better here:

Pretty cool, huh?

Quoteworthy

“Roses grow upon briars, which is to signify that all temporal sweets are mixed with bitter. But what seems more especially to be meant by it is that pure happiness, the crown of glory, is to be come at in no other way than by bearing Christ’s cross, by a life of mortification, self-denial, and labor, and bearing all things for Christ.”

— Jonathan Edwards,
in Images or Shadows of Divine Things, 1748