Directories

Ever wish you could find out what your family was doing between the decennial US census enumerations?

You can. City directories and similar listings provide a regular—usually, annual or biannual—glimpse into the everyday lives of your ancestors, from employment to residences to what they did with their leisure time. Simply put, they can put your ancestor in a time and place, making it easier to locate other genealogical records.

This guide will point you to the directories likely to name your kin, and help you mine these listings for every possible ancestral clue.

TYPES OF DIRECTORIES

Names and addresses are the fundamental components of directories. Beyond that, directories may differ, with their focus on various populations, listings by house number or name, additional details about individuals, and other supplemental content.

City Directories

Similar to phone books, city directories list residents of a particular locale. (Despite the name, some also covered small towns and rural areas.) Two prominent publishers of these books, which usually came out annually or biannually for a given area, were R.L. Polk & Co., and Williams.

The first US city directories as we know them today were issued in Philadelphia in 1785 by two competing companies. Many other cities followed suit.

City directories were