Comments on: Anatomy of a City Directory, by Juliana Smith

by: Jane Vaughan

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 23:01:48 +0000

The City directories have all kinds of ads from products available and price. Types of services like life insurance and bank information. You get very interesting information on the cost of things at the time of the city directory for the ads in them. Great to get your family first but all is very entertaining.

I found full information on my uncle by marriage business as a pharmacist and all the other items such as ice cream and hobby store at his pharmacy. I found my paternal aunt and her husbands iron works with all the information of what they did and contact information. A true gold mine in my case.

by: collier smith

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:26:43 +0000

How can one obtain or view a listing of all the directories in the online collection?

by: Elaine Levine

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:00:55 +0000

Where is the printable version of this article?

by: Dae Powell

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:26:54 +0000

I love city directories. I covered this topic at the Mesa, Arizona Family History Expo last month. I’ve a presentation on city directories on my web site (under presentations). Jasia has a multi-part series on city directories on her blog, creativegene.blogspot.com/, which is excellent, too.

Don’t overlook this important, public resource!

Happy Dae.
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com

by: Keith Brook

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:10:35 +0000

In case anybody was wondering, OCR means Optical Character recognition. There are one or two producers of software for this. If you use it, please take care to go through the new script word by word, as it is not foolproof and very often errors are created. It is, however, much better than it was, say 25 years ago.

by: Laini Giles

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:53:42 +0000

I adore directories! And I love traveling to the areas where the folks lived and obtaining pix of the homes and businesses to include in my book on my Smiths.

One of my favorites was a man in Racine, Wisconsin around 1893. When I looked for the building (yay! Still standing!), it was labeled “Klinkert.”

I did a little research, and it turns out Mr. Klinkert was a brewer, and leased out saloons to only sell HIS beer. My fellow was running the saloon downstairs, and the family lived upstairs.

I also found two of the homes my great grandparents (and grandfather and great aunt) lived in in Minneapolis. You never know what kind of goodies you’ll find.

by: Bette

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:06:43 +0000

I love the ads. Some will go on my family history pages. “Maybe they had a stove like this in the boarding house my great grandparents had!” Helps envision how they lived.

I was able to go backwards and find Sam who lived across town from his future bride, my great aunt, whom he finally met somewhere, were married and he joined my family in the boarding house. Nothing like a love story to entice readers to read this thing I’m trying to write.