Your Guide to Finding Ancestors
in City Directories

• Examples
• Guides to Using City Directories
• Availability
• Online copies

Examples

• 1837 Detroit -- note the scope of information available in this city directory
• Before you find your ancestor, find the listing of abbreviations.
• 1928 Butte Montana
  • Where does Henry U. Sarles live?
• sample pages from city directories with helpful advice about analyzing the information.
• Don't forget to check the Additions, Corrections and Removals page if there is one.
• Advertisements can be interesting
• What do we learn about Henriette Mann?
• Did your ancestor run a business?
• When did Anthony Koscielniak die ?
• Is there a a McNairy Family in Nashville in 1859?
  • What about Patrick Mulligan-- was he there then?
• name of wife is listed in parentheses
• 1889 Toledo page 122
  • How many people with the surname Abraham live at 385 Dorr?
  • If I am looking for an Acker family, what other spelling might I want to check?
  • Where did Aretemus W. Adams go?
• example of a map in a city directory
• Ann Arbor, Ypsi 1917 Fred W. Hoeft lives at 503 W. Jefferon. Who are his neighbors?

Guides to using city directories.

• The Board of Certification of Genealogists has a skill building page Analyzing City Directories
• Crandell. The Value and Scope of City Directories
• Smith. Secrets to Success in Using City Directories
• Smith. Using Ancestry.com City Directories
• Lloyd. A Fire Destroyed the 1890 Census, But It Doesn't Have to Destroy Your Research.

There is a major microform set called City Directories of the United States", which is marketed to libraries and many libraries own portions; few own the whole set.

• The Allen County Library in Fort Wayne has a full set I believe -- if not a full set, they have a significant portion of it.
• The Library of Congress has this set and a page that lists holdings (scroll down and click the state of interest to see the list for that state.

The place most likely to have book or film copies of city directories for a town is the public library of that town. Often state libraries and larger libraries will also have city directories for towns in that state. To find a library in the town you are researching, use LibWeb. In most cases the public libraries are the first place to check, but state and academic libraries also often have sets of city directories. The Bentley Library has many city directories for Michigan cities and towns

To find City Directories in the catalog of the Family History Library, search by locality, then check the topic "directories" -- remember, sometimes a directory will cover a county, but most often it will be listed under the city location. Here is a little more information on finding city directories in the catalog of the Family History Library.

Genealogy Research Associates offers a helpful site, that includes lists to available directories for various states, research guidance and a bibliography of resources: City Directories of the United States of America.. It is not yet complete, but the intention of this website is to " identify all printed, microfilmed, and online directories, and their repositories, for the United States.  This site will answer these questions: does a directory exist for a locality?  If it does, where can it be found?" I found few, if any, links to online directories. The list serves as an unofficial union list of City Directories. For many there is an option to order a lookup in the city directory by clicking the "order copy" icon on the right. The price of the lookups (plus shipping and handling) seem to me to be on the high end of a reasonable charge, but if all other efforts fail, it is good to know this service is available.

City Directories Online

This excellent site keeps track (as best one can) of the city directories that are going up online: Historical Directories Online . Keep current with new additions by subscribing to or visiting her Online Historical Directories blog.

Some City Directories have been digitized on Google Books. and the Internet Archive.

I love using the City Directories at DistantCousin.com ! It is so easy to see and find the breadth of information available in each one.

City directories are included in subscription databases Ancestry.com, Heritage Quest and Footnote.com. Some libraries have subscriptions to each of these.

• U.S. City Directories at Ancestry.com
  • 1890 Census Substitute
  • 1940 Census Substitute
  • 1950 Census Substitute
  • This guide covers specifically the availability of city directories on Ancestry.com, but also contains valuable general information.
• Heritage Quest will have city directories in the books section.
• The content of Footnote.com includes City Directories.
  • Browse City Directories
  • Browse Miscellaneous Directories
  • Footnote has a City Directories topic page, with some information about how to glean information from this source.

There are a few searchable directories on Old Directories.com . This site also offers a list of some other city directories available online.

You can purchase CDs of some old city directories.

There is a city directories mailing list for those who want to request lookups and are willing to do look-ups for this area.

More Links:

Cyndi's List: City Directories