Brick Foundation Wall

Fellow Engineers: I'm looking for advice for a renovation to a 100 yr old balloon-framed house. It has a 3 ft brick foundation wall on 1'x1' concrete footing. The renovation removes two load bearing wood walls, comprising a 90 deg corner, on the 1st floor and adding support beams with posts down to the top of the wall and underpinning the footings.    Besides reliability of the wall (there are no observed cracks or gaps) my concerns are the following:  1. How reliable (accurate) is the 1:2 load dispersion relationship in the wall?  2. Would it be better to cut out the brick corner and post down to the footing? (I'm afraid of destroying the brick corner interlacing.)    3. Are there (inexpensive) ways to test wall structural adequacy?   Thank you in advance for your help, Irv Fruchtman