Have you ever wondered who lived on the piece of land you live on before you did? Could your property have been used as a hotel, blacksmith shop, or even a cemetery? There is an interesting way to find out. It is your local city directory. Every town has one, for each year going as far back as the incorporation of your town.

City directories are a great way to trace the history of your property. They were created to list the households, businesses, government offices, and civic organizations found on each street of your community. Although city directories do look a bit like telephone directories, they are lists of:

Street addresses with the names of residents, businesses, government offices and civic organizations, numerical telephone numbers in numerical sequence with the name of the subscriber and the street address, the business community with descriptions of the businesses, and an alphabetical directory listing the residents, their address, telephone number, occupation, place of employment, spouse’s name, and homeowner designation.

To track your address, look at the current city directory for your community. Since city directories are published annually, you may want to track your address back every five years until your street no longer is listed. The newer your neighborhood, the less likely your street will be listed every five years. You may have to trace back every single year. However, the land your home is sitting on may be listed as something else. What you need to do is track your street on a local street map so you can determine what the land was used for and if names were changed.

At some point as you track your street, the street listings may disappear and the alphabetical list of people will appear. Take the name of the people at your address and start tracking them as far back as you can. Included in the information will be their address and occupation. At the same time, you may notice that the number of listings for your community is getting smaller. As you locate dates showing a population growth within your community, compare the date with state, national, or global events, and hypothesize why the growth rate increased.

There is one other issue to consider when working with a city directory. Information about you is taken over the phone or by people going door-to-door. Should you choose not to answer the questions or do not send back the written questionnaire, your name will not appear in the directory. Thus, city directories are not 100% accurate. The information is dependent on the response of the person or business.

Activity

1. Locate your address in the street address section of the most current city directory.

a. Write down the date starting with the most recent city directory.
b. Also, write down the name of the family that lives at your address.
c. Continue listing the dates and names as far back as you can go. (Some of you will see that names change often at your address, others of you will be the only family to have lived at that address.)
d. Should your family be no longer listed, write down who did live at your address before your family moved there. Remember, a business, a government office, or a civic organization might have been the landowner at your address.

2. What happens if my street is no longer listed?

When your street is no longer listed, check the name of the person who last lived at that address. You will have to switch to the alphabetical list of people in the city directory. This time you will see how long this person remained at your address or if he or she moved around town. Track and record as much information as you can about this person.

3. What happens if my street changes names?

This is why you need to look at maps of your town from different time periods. Sometimes the street that used to have a number gets a name. This could happen because somebody in town did something important. Sometimes the post office will change the mail delivery system and ask the town to give names to streets rather than numbers.

4. What are city directories used for today?

a. Who would use them?
b. Why would they be useful?
c. What can historians learn about a community by investigating a city directory?