City and area directories typically contain entries for working family members and include names, occupations, and home and business /hc/en-us/articles/53933340764691-/hc/it-it/articles/53933306512019.

In this collection, you’ll find street directories, business advertisements, maps, hotel listings, lists of government officials, and information about charitable organizations, churches, cemeteries, and more.

Finding city and area directories

1. From any Ancestry page, click the Search tab and select Card Catalogue.
2. Under Filters on the left side, select Directories & Member Lists and then City & Area Directories.
3. Click Search entire "City & Area Directories" Category.
4. Enter information and click Search.  
    

Tips

• Once you’ve located someone in a city directory, enter their street address in quotation marks into the keyword field of the Card Catalog to bring up other residents of that address.
• Because directory records can place someone in a specific location in a particular year, they’re often especially useful in tracking a person’s whereabouts between census years.
• If you have trouble finding someone, try searching by their last name only. Since the entries are alphabetical, you’ll be able to see all the people with that last name. If the person’s first name is abbreviated, you should be able to find them by skimming through the entries with that surname.
• It’s best not to rely solely on the names in directories, since many people share names. Cross-check /hc/en-us/articles/53933340764691-/hc/it-it/articles/53933306512019 and occupations with information from censuses to ensure the name you find in a city directory matches your ancestor.
• Multiple directories were sometime published for the same city in the same year; when you find one directory, check for more.
• Widows are often noted as widows in city directories. Narrow down a husband’s date of death by locating the last directory in which the husband appeared and the first directory that lists the wife as a widow.