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City Directories
City Directories are packed with family and local history information. Towards the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, most cities and towns in the United States had a local directory of residents, as well as local businesses and other statistics. In many ways, these city directories served as precursors to the telephone directory. One drawback, however, is that the directories often listed only males of majority age, with exceptions for widows and female landowners.
In some cases, city directories also included separate pages showing the marriages that occurred during the previous year and also pages showing deaths occurring during this same period. If a resident had moved, they are sometimes still listed with an indication of where they moved (e.g. - 'rem to Albany') indicates the prior resident had moved to Albany.
Types of Records
Leading genealogy site, Ancestry.com features a collection of City and other directories, as well as collections of member lists. These can be helpful in tracking the movements of your ancestors from year to year. The Directories & Members Lists Collection contains a variety of records. This section explains some of the types of records you might encounter:
Alumni Directory
Alumni directories contain a listing of individuals who attended a particular university, the year that they graduated, and their degree. If you can find information about your ancestor in one of these directories, you may be able to locate other records within the organization which can provide insight into the life of your ancestor.
Business or Professional Directory
Business directories usually contain information such as dates and places of birth, dates of marriage, names of children, length of residence in the town, and other valuable information. They are usually organized by county, and depending on the time period, vary in the amount of information they contain. Often, you'll find advertisements for certain businesses in these directories.
Professional directories include directories for people such as doctors and lawyers. They will most often include information relating to that individual's history in the profession, as well as other biographical information.
City Directory
City directories help you locate where and when a person lived. A city directory can often guide you to other records such as censuses, death and probate records, naturalization records, land records, and church records.
Member List
A member list usually includes the names of individuals who are members of a particular group or organization.
Telephone Directory
Most people are familiar with the common telephone directory; they contain addresses and phone numbers. These directories can be quite helpful in locating living relatives or possible relatives with the same surname or a similar surname. The phone company in each city in the United States publishes a directory of everyone in that area who has a phone number.
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