Comments on: U.S. City Directories: One Database, a Billion Records, and a Lot of Answers

By: Genealogy News Corral, Jan. 7-11

Genealogy News Corral, Jan. 7-11 — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 07:00:54 +0000

[...] US census collections (correcting some Indiana birth places that were keyed incorrectly) and its City Directories. In addition, Ancestry continues with its indexing of information for the 1940 US census to make it [...]

By: Genealogy Path – Ancestry.com adjusts errors in 1850 census index

Genealogy Path – Ancestry.com adjusts errors in 1850 census index — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:10:43 +0000

[...] our current collections better is important to us. For example, we have recently updated our City Directories to include even more information and are still indexing information for the 1940 US Census to [...]

By: Joan Lottner

Joan Lottner — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 01:51:08 +0000

I have been searching the Grand Rapids and Detroit, Michigan databases and am extremely disappointed with the results. I have had to browse almost all of them and have made dozens of corrections so far when able. Dozens more I have not been able to correct as the indexing was so incomplete as to make correction impossible. Visual transcribing by the computer (as was done in the beta directories here) looks to be extremely inaccurate and in desperate need of major tweeking. Why Ancestry are you not using World Connect to fix this for now until you find a better solution? I know there a quite a few things on there now, but I have found the directories a very exciting new addition but they need to be way more accurate to be of any use to anyone. There are many that are incompletely scanned also and I am wondering if it is because that is all Ancestry had to scan or if the scanning was not completed due to this being simply a beta test version right now. Will the missing pages be scanned in later once all the bugs are worked out?

By: Sara Savel

Sara Savel — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:03:20 +0000

The Detroit city directories are grossly incomplete, especially the midcentury ones. Many of them only have the first few hundred pages, or just a incomplete street guide index. Detroit was a major American city up until the 80′S, with a large population. The city directories should be complete. I know they are available, as I have seen the original directories in person at a few genealogical libraries.

By: Denise

Denise — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:19:21 +0000

The city directories have been very interesting in finding more about where my family lived in Hartford, CT during the thirties and forties. However I have had to BROWSE through the files since the indexes are mostly useless for many of the years. Whoever did the indexing for this town (Hartford, Connecticut) mus thave just hit random keys to page through the names, rendering any search useless. It be be very worthwhile to pass this information along to whomever handles the review of the index results BEFORE publishing to the web and it would be even better if I could report the problem directly from the image.

By: Diane

Diane — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:00:59 +0000

The US Directories Beta are a great thing unfortunately the transcriptions for the Detroit Directories are atrocious. Browsing is the only practical way to search them. Also, the directories are incomplete. Either missing half the names (from N-Z) or just having random groups of the street indexes. The 1940 Detroit directory has only 255 pages of street indexing (back matter)!!!

By: Michele

Michele — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:38:43 +0000

I would suggest using the browse feature in the city directories if you can’t find someone in a search and you know where they lived. This also lets you know which scans are incomplete. I’ve come across several years where there is only the first or second half of the alphabet. So frustrating. However, I am very happy with the additional directories that have been posted!

By: Judy Holzwart

Judy Holzwart — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 02:14:29 +0000

Thanks to the new directories posted, I was able to narrow down, to within a year, when my gggrandfather, Frederick, died. Thanks so much!

By: Jade

Jade — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 21:29:33 +0000

Most people in USA did not live in cities until at least the 1940s.

This crowing about City Directories is a lot like the foolish blog statement that “most of our ancestors lived in London . . . .” in 1911!!!! My last London ancestor left there before 1654.

All of us could use more historical understanding.

By: Shelly

Shelly — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:27:33 +0000

I have found the new US City Directories Beta database to be helpful and hope it continues to expand, but I have encountered a problem. Any time I try to do an exact search with a person’s name & their state, it tells me that there are no results. If I search for just the name, it gives me lots of results from the same state (in addition to multiple other states). I hope this will be fixed when it passes the Beta stage.