Record guide

City directories

City directories list a town's residents with addresses and jobs, often year by year, so they show where your ancestor lived between censuses.

A city directory is an old printed book that lists the people and businesses of a town, much like a phone book before telephones. A typical entry gives a name, an occupation and an address. Many directories were updated about once a year, so a run of them can follow a family from street to street for decades.

The Library of Congress notes that family historians use directories to fill the gaps between censuses. A census shows a household once every ten years; a directory may show the same person in nine of the years in between, and catch the year a widow first appears alone or a son starts working.

What an entry can tell you

The basic entry is short: surname, given name, occupation, and home address. Many directories add more. The Library of Congress says entries often give the place of employment and the name of a spouse, so a line can read like a tiny biography: a man, his job as a teamster at a named lumber yard, his wife's name, and the street where they lived.

Small words carry meaning. A woman may be listed as wid., short for widow, sometimes with her late husband's name, which suggests he died before that edition was compiled. A person listed as boarding at another address may be a young worker living with relatives or strangers, and the household they boarded with is worth checking. Many directories explain their abbreviations in a key near the front, so look for that page before you interpret an entry.

More than names: the rest of the book

Directories were also guidebooks to the town. The Connecticut State Library describes later directories that include a yearly calendar, street maps, railroad schedules, engravings of public buildings, lists of town offices, courts, public schools and societies, and business listings. Some even printed marriage, birth and death information.

These extra pages help you place a family in its world. A list of churches can point you to the congregation nearest the family's street. A list of lodges and societies may name the group whose records hold a member's death. Business listings show who ran the store or factory where your ancestor worked.

Directories by address

The usual city directory is arranged alphabetically by surname. Some cities also had directories arranged by street and house number. The Library of Congress calls these street address or criss-cross directories; its collection of criss-cross directories covers 1930 to 2005 and has no listing by name at all.

Address directories let you look at a whole street. You can see who lived next door, which relatives shared a building, and when a house changed hands. The Library of Congress suggests them for neighborhood connections and house history, two things genealogists often need when a family is hard to separate from others of the same name.

Limits to keep in mind

Directories were compiled through door-to-door surveys, according to the Library of Congress, and were published at irregular intervals. A canvasser could miss a household, so an absence from one year's book is not proof that someone had moved or died.

Information was gathered before the book went to press, so a recent move or death may not show until a later edition. A directory also shows where someone lived, not whether they owned the property; for ownership, turn to deeds. And because many people shared common names, confirm an identification with a second detail, such as the same occupation or the same spouse, before you treat two entries as one person.

How to use a run of directories

Start with a year when you know the address from a census, then work forward and backward one year at a time. Note every change: a new job, a new address, a spouse's name disappearing, a widow's listing, a grown child appearing at the same address. Those changes are clues to marriages, deaths and moves that you can then look for in other records.

The Library of Congress warns that its microfilmed runs can have gaps of as many as five years. When a year is missing, check whether a nearby town's directory covered the area, because directories for many places include listings for neighboring communities.

On the page, look for

Write down the directory's city, publisher and year of publication.
Read the key to abbreviations at the front of the book.
Copy the full entry exactly: name, occupation, workplace, home address, spouse.
Note markers such as wid. or boarding, and any name after them.
Look up the same name in the year before and the year after.
If the city had an address directory, look up the street to see neighbors and others at the same house.
Check the lists of churches, lodges and businesses for groups linked to the family.
Compare each find with the nearest census before treating it as the same person.

Where to see them for free

The Library of Congress holds a very large collection: a microfilm set covering more than 1,200 cities, towns and counties, mostly 1861 to 1960, plus a microfiche set of pre-1861 directories. These are used on site; staff cannot search names for you and the directories do not go out on interlibrary loan.
State libraries and local public libraries, which often hold directories for their own area. The Connecticut State Library suggests searching its catalog by town name plus city directory.
Digitized directories in the FamilySearch catalog, found with a place search; FamilySearch is free with an account. The Library of Congress also lists city directories it has digitized in its U.S. Local History collection.
Local historical societies, which sometimes keep directories that never reached a big library.

Sources

How to cite this page

Daily Ancestor. "City directories." Record guides. https://dailyancestor.com/records/city-directories. Last checked 2026-10-01.