City Directories and Genealogy
We often use city directories to quickly locate a person, or family in a town or to confirm their occupation. But, for every quick research endeavor, there are issues. City directories are a great resource, as long as you know that they may not have been created for the year you are researching. It took months to even a year to create a city directory. So you must adjust your City Directory research time frame. Searching for someone in 1918, check out the 1918 city directory and the 1919 directory. This is to say, if the effort began Jan 1918, a city directory depending on the data collection process and size of the city, may have come off the press in Oct of 1918. Conversely, if the process for 1918 data collection began in June, after planting season, or at a time when the weather allowed for door to door collections of ads to support the directory, your 1918 person may really be in the 1919 city directory. For our ancestors to produce a city directory, t...
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