Hey there friends!

Before Family History Month closes out with a bang on Halloween 🎃, I would like to give you one more family story thread to pull.

Remember back in the olden days when you had to look up someone’s phone number in a paperback directory? 😂 And unbelievably sometimes even memorized it? Well, in some communities there was one more publicly available source of information about local residents.

That source was called a City Directory.

I don’t think I have ever seen a physical city directory. I encountered the first one when Ancestry.com made it available to me. It was the 1955 city directory for the town where I live now - Fayetteville, AR. Both my parents and my grandparents lived here at that time.

What can you find from a city directory about your family’s history? Read on to learn more.

BEHIND THE SCENES THIS WEEK​
​Pull the thread of family stories found in city directories

City directories were created by independent publishers as a way to sell advertising spots. I’m sure what was inside varied, but the ones I have seen listed all the residents of a town or city in alphabetical order, much like a phone book.

You can see their home address and phone number.

But the difference is that the city directory also lists where they were employed if that information was available. From this sample of my mom and dad’s listing in the 1955 city directory (highlighted in yellow), you’ll see that their names are in bold and the font size is a tiny bit larger.

That’s because my dad’s employer purchased ad space in the directory.

I also found the 1956 city directory for my central Arkansas hometown in the FamilySearch digital library. It was published a few years before my family moved there, but it is a gem! It was published by the local newspaper and, in addition to the individual people listings, it has all sorts of photos and information about the town in general. I recognize the names of many of the city leaders.

Here’s a wonderful website to learn more about where you can pull this family story thread and possibly find an online version of a city directory with your ancestor listed. The peak for publishing city directories seems to be in the 1950-1960s.

If you live nearby the places where your ancestor lived, of course the local libraries will no doubt have copies from the years they were published.

On the linked site, I found this information that gives you a good understanding of how city directories can help with your research. Happy thread pulling!

(From historicalsite.org)
​The power of directories is repetition. Pick a person and look them up in every available year, oldest to newest, recording occupation and address each time. Patterns emerge fast:

• Moves — a new address pins a move to within a year, far tighter than the ten-year census gap.
• Career changes — "lab" becomes "foreman" becomes "propr" (proprietor); you can watch someone work their way up or open their own shop.
• Deaths and marriages — a man disappears and his wife reappears as "wid"; a daughter listed at the family home vanishes (married) or gains her own occupation.
• Arrivals and departures — the first year a name appears and the last year it appears bracket a family's time in town, telling you when to search ship manifests, land records, or the next city's directory.

INTENTIONAL HOME - Decluttering & Curating Memories
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RESOURCES & SUPPORT

​My choice for a NOK box​

​Affordable thumb drives​

​theNOKbox.com​

​Help for using phone notes apps​

FREE DOWNLOADS

• ​Download Free Scanned Photo Log Spreadsheet (available in both Google Sheet and Excel)
• ​Download Free Ebook - “The Big 5: Family Stories You Need To Preserve For Future Generations”
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