Wednesday, January 12, 2022

Reverse Searches and Browsing in U.S. City Directories on Ancestry.com

By James Colgan

A lot of people never find out that it is possible to search city and county directories on Ancestry.com (and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Fold3) in very helpful ways other than just running a name search and browsing for directory listings.

It is possible to:

  • Conduct a reverse address search, so you can find the people living at the address you're researching
    • Find family members of different surnames (such as married names), friends, and other associates by searching for the address rather than the name.  
    • Does a woman disappear suddenly from the historical record?  Perhaps she married.  Often, they would start out living with family or nearby as neighbors. 
    • You should research and attempt to identify the house-mates and neighbors of your own family members, because this may lead to finding previously-unknown relatives such as siblings, cousins, aunts/uncles, etc.
  • Search by street name only (leave out the house number), to find the residents of the same street you're researching
    • Many times, family members were also neighbors
  • Browse city directories manually when search fails
    • Search often fails because Optical Character Recognition (OCR) quality is poor on these old documents.

To begin using the Ancestry.com city and county directories in the United States, navigate to the permanent Ancestry page called "U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995" at this web address (DON'T FORGET to save it to your bookmarks, so you can use it later):   

https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2469/

Here you will see a search screen as below, allowing you to enter several search options.  This annotated screenshot will show you how to search purely by address, instead of by name.

IMPORTANT TIP:  Since most directories omit the designation of the street, road, etc., you should leave out terms like "St," "Rd," "Ln," "Hwy," etc. in most cases. Use the shortest usable search term to reduce your chances of running into Optical Character Recognition (OCR) problems.


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Browsing Directories Manually: Ancestry.com

 Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology can often fail.  Entire lines and sections do not get transcribed.  The best option available if your search is failing is either to search for a nearby name and then browse to your search target, or jump through directory pages until you have narrowed down the right listings in alphabetical order.  

Keep in mind, names may sometimes be listed by business type or by individual towns (or other subdivisions), so you may need to browse the directory until you have determined the format.

To find the manual browsing option on Ancestry.com, visit the permanent page "U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995."  Then navigate to the right column, where you can input the state, city or county, and year.  This will take you to the individual directory to browse:

 
 
 
While browsing directories, you can quickly switch years by clicking on the year at the top of the page:

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Browsing Directories Manually: Fold3

Even though Fold3 is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ancestry.com, its collections feature different directories for a number of major U.S. cities.  Some city directories on Fold3 cover years that are not available on Ancestry.  It also has a far easier to browse navigation layout.  

To begin browsing U.S. city directories on Fold3, navigate to the permanent page for directories on Fold3:   

https://www.fold3.com/browse?general.title.content.type=directory:City+Directories  


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A Tip on Using Directories 

One of the simplest ways to use city directories in genealogy is to take screenshots of the pages with your family on them, crop the page down to your family, and save them in a folder with the year in the file name (e.g., "Philadelphia City Directory - 1866").  This can easily be accomplished with a very simple program like Microsoft Paint or Photo Viewer.
 

You should also copy the listings for members of your family with other surnames.  A quick-and-easy way to keep this information together and easily browsed on your computer by year is to paste the directory listings for your other family members into your screenshot.  
 
You can copy the listings that you are not certain about into your file, so you can easily come back to those addresses.  
 
Don't forget to copy the common misspellings of your family names!
 
Example:

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Where to Find Directories Online

 

 

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Wednesday, August 18, 2021

Sources for Philadelphia City Directories (Including Pre-Civil War Era)

Many people use city directories to track the year-to-year movements of their families and changing jobs over time, in addition to allowing us to find people living at the same addresses.

Ancestry.com has an extensive, searchable City Directory collection, but their collection DOES NOT cover any years before the Civil War (their collection begins at 1861).

Ancestry's directories are available through the U.S. City Directories collection.

The Ancestry.com City Directory available years for Philadelphia are: 1861 to 1925 (1869 Missing); 1930; 1935; 1950)

Their collection includes many cities (the beginning year of "1822" listed in the title is for some other cities; not Philadelphia).

For those with very old Philadelphia families, or those of us with Irish Famine immigrants, that time frame is a little late to begin looking for our family members (in the case of the Irish immigrants, you want to start in the late 1840s/early 1850s). 

So where do you get directories that are older? There are several locations. These sources are my favorites: 

1. Fold3.com - Available Years: 1785, 1791, 1793-1811, 1813, 1814, 1816-1825, 1828-1831, 1833-1835, 1837-1919, 1921, 1922

Fold has an easily VERY easily-browsable collection of directories sorted by year (direct link to Philadelphia directories) (subscription needed)

In addition to easy browsing, you can search the directories for names in the top right corner: 

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2. Archive.org has many directories available. - Available Years: 1785 to 1867 (with some years missing)

The easiest search query to run on Archive.org to find a particular directory is CITY-NAME city directory (replace the term "city-name" with the city you wish to find).  You can also search WITHIN the directories, on the page of the directory you are interested in, for particular names.

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3. LDS Genealogy (unaffiliated with Family Search) has a list of directories sorted by year, hosted on other websites. 
 
All of this site's links are to directories hosted on other websites.  Some of the links are to paid sites like Ancestry.com or MyHeritage, both of which require a subscription.  Some of the links are to free resources, including the National Archives (which is not linked on most other sites).  The links on this site go well into the middle of the 20th Century - much later than most of the other directory link sites.
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4.  Temple University (Philadelphia) also has a list of directories sorted by year, hosted on other websites. 
 
Temple's links include links to a number of editions of Boyd's Blue Book (society directory), which is not listed on most other sites.
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5.  Google Advanced Book Search offers the capability to run a search for a particular directory (for example, "Philadelphia city directory 1852" AND search the text at the same time.   
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6. Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network  - Links to Available Years (Mostly hosted on Archive.org): 1785 to 1867 (with some years missing)
 
GeoHistory Network has a list of links to directories, as well as other geographic-oriented historical resources such as atlases and maps.  You can find maps for the time period in which your family lived in Philadelphia. This site links to the directories on the Archive.org site listed above.
 
Starts with the 1785 Directory, but STOPS at the the 1867 Directory.  You will need the links for directories after that year from another website. 
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7. Family Search Philadelphia City Directories
 
A number of directories available on microfiche, as well as online. 
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8. U.S. Library of Congress:  U.S. Telephone Directory Collection (Philadelphia):
 
Telephone directories in the collections of the U.S. Library of Congress.
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9. State Library of Pennsylvania: City, County & Regional Directories
 
PDF directory of the City, County, and Regional Directories held by the State Library of Pennsylvania.
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10. Free Library of Philadelphia Directories Finding Aid
 
Guide to the various kinds of directories, including specialty directories, in the holdings of the Free Library of Philadelphia.
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11. The Ancestor Hunt: Free Online Pennsylvania City Directories 
 
Links to free Pennsylvania directories across the web
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Missing from Ancestry
 
The following directories are missing from Ancestry.com's Philadelphia collection and can be found elsewhere:
  • 1785 through 1860 (See Links Above)
  • 1869:
  •  1920: Does not appear to be digitized
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Searching Directories

Four main websites allow you to search within the content of the directories for names, addresses, etc.:
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Creating Bookmarks

One quick way to record these links for you to use over and over again is to create a Bookmarks folder in your browser.  An example folder is below:
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A Note About Search Accuracy and Completeness

The accuracy and completeness of your search in scanned directories rests ENTIRELY on the accuracy of the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) that is run on the scanned pages.  Very, very frequently, the computer reads the old text poorly and it is not searchable through the search functions of the website being used.  The results will be of mixed quality - some good, some bad.  You may need to do manual browsing of the pages to find the alphabetical listing for your family name and/or the individuals you are searching.

Using the "search" function will absolutely yield very different results between the searchable sites, such as Ancestry.com, Archive.org, Fold3.com, and Google Books.   
You can use these differences to your advantage.  If you don't find the name or address you are searching for in your search results, try one of the other 4 searchable sites.

To read more about the accuracy of Optical Character Recognition, visit Wikipedia.

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A Tip on Using Directories 

One of the simplest ways to use city directories in genealogy is to take screenshots of the pages with your family on them, crop the page down to your family, and save them in a folder with the year in the file name (e.g., "Philadelphia City Directory - 1866").
 

You should also copy the listings for members of your family with other surnames.  A quick-and-easy way to keep this information together and easily browsed on your computer by year is to paste the directory listings for your other family members into your screenshot.  
 
You can copy the listings that you are not certain about into your file, so you can easily come back to those addresses.  
 
Don't forget to copy the common misspellings of your family names!
 
Example:

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Directories for Other Pennsylvania Counties

Directories for other Pennsylvania counties can be found on several websites, including:
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Special Directories (Beyond Residential-Oriented Directories)

 These directories include a society directory (known as the Blue Book), business-only directories, The Philadelphia Colored Directory, and others.
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How to Use City Directories in Your Research

Get the basics on how to utilize city directories in your family history work.
 
Ancestry.com has a video introduction to using city directories in your genealogy research. You can watch video the for free on YouTube.
 


 






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Sunday, August 8, 2021

Ideas for FindAGrave Memorial Content and Tutorial on Adding Links and Text Formatting

FindAGrave is one of the greatest free resources available online for genealogy research.  Many people do not know:

  • That you can format your memorials with bold and italics to organize them better.
  • That you can link to OTHER memorials and Virtual Cemeteries in the FindAGrave memorial's Biography section.  (Note that you cannot create links to websites OUTSIDE FindAGrave in your memorial. The link will be automatically stripped.)

I'm going to show you how to do those 2 things, as well as provide some ideas for information that you can post on your memorial pages.

Using FindAGrave is a great way to share, freely and publicly, some of your research with the world.  I like to include some standardized basics on my memorial pages, so I can both benefit myself (giving me a quick-reference, easy and quick-access place to store the basics on an individual), and benefit everyone else who may be researching the individual.  Providing the basic information also helps people determine whether they are looking at the correct individual for their research.

 Screenshot of some recommended formatting options:

 Click here for a live link to the memorial shown above as a sample.

Here are some of my suggestions for information to include on your FindAGrave memorials:

  • Birth (Date of birth, place of birth, source)
  • Baptism (Date of baptism, place of baptism, source) (Or other major religious milestones, depending on the religion)
  • Baptism Sponsors (Godparents)
  • Marriage (Date of marriage, place of marriage, license number and name of government who issued the license, source)
  • Marriage Witnesses
  • Funeral, basic facts (Address if held at a house, date, name of the place of worship, and location of the place of worship)
  • A listing of ALL individuals buried in the plot (or group of plots), with wording like "The following individuals are buried in this plot."  It also helps to add a note of either "complete listing" or "may be an incomplete list."  You can make it even more useful by adding the birth and death years after the name and hyperlinking to the memorials of those individuals.
  • A TYPED copy of the death notice, the name of the newspaper, and the date of publication
  • A picture of the death notice in the Photos section
  • A note about their occupation may be appropriate, depending on the individual
  • Add a special note if there is a cenotaph elsewhere for the individual, or if the grave was relocated (so that people do not create duplicate memorials for a previous burial or having the name on a headstone elsewhere).  If there is a cenotaph in another cemetery or plot, or if the name is listed on a headstone elsewhere, create a page for that memorial and have the FindAGrave administrators mark the cenotaph as one (only an admin can mark a burial as a cenotaph).   Cenotaph Information on FindAGrave 


 

Other possible major life events or facts that you should consider include:

  • Military service (War or period, exact years of service, branch of service, major medals/awards, etc.)
  • If you are unable to link to FindAGrave memorial for family members like parents or siblings, because their place of burial is not known, you can add information on their family and links to the known memorials in the Biography section.
  • Immigration information (origin place, destination place including city of arrival, names of other immigrants in the family, links to the memorials of the other immigrants, etc.)
  • Other major life events such as migration within a country or participation in historical events
  • List civilian honors and awards
  • Political offices held (local, state, national offices)
  • If the story of the death is significant historically or otherwise interesting, include some information on this.  An example would be if the individual died while rescuing someone. Example:

 

Example of Biographical Information

This information explains the basics of this confusing family because they have many deaths within short periods, news stories about them, and multiple children with the same name (a child named for a previous one who died).  It makes it easier to wrap your mind around their story and provides context to the glaring fact that they died in groups, and those years stand out in the list of children.

Examples of Adding Notes to Correct Errors

 

How to Code Bold, Italics, and Hyperlinks on FindAGrave

For BOLD, enclose the text you would like to be bold within an HTML BOLD tag set (<b></b>), like so:

    <b>SAMPLE TEXT</b>

For ITALICS, enclose the text you would like to be bold within an HTML ITALICS tag set (<i></i>), like so:

     <i>SAMPLE TEXT</i>

The most common use of italics in genealogy is for Maiden Names, but the formatting can also be used for various kinds of emphasis on your memorial's page.

 For BOLD and ITALICS together, simply add both tag sets together:

    <b><i>SAMPLE TEXT</i></b>

Remember that your text MUST be contained WITHIN an opening AND a closing tag (the closing tag is the one with the forward-slash).

To create a HYPERLINK to another Memorial page, you must use an HTML tag for links.  Links also have an opening and a closing tag that goes on either side of the text you wish to be linked.  Note that ONLY links to other FindAGrave pages will work.  Others pointed elsewhere on the internet will be stripped.

    <a href="http://www.findagrave.com/memorial/SAMPLE/">SAMPLE TEXT TO BE LINKED</a>

    To create your link, replace the word "SAMPLE" (BUT DON'T REMOVE THE QUOTES!) with the memorial ID number.  You don't need to include the name in the full hyperlink.  You can add bold, italics, or both to your links by adding those tags above around your link code:

    <b><i><a href="http://www.findagrave.com/memorial/SAMPLE">SAMPLE TEXT TO BE LINKED</a></i></b>

    Everything WITHIN the opening (<a href="">) and closing (</a>) tags of the link will be the link's text.  It can be anything you like.

    Example of linking the names of individuals listed in a death notice to their memorial pages:

 

To create a HYPERLINK to a Virtual Cemetery, you use the same code except that the web address includes the following text: "/virtual-cemetery/SAMPLE-NUMBER".  Replace the SAMPLE with the virtual cemetery number (available in the web address, in your browser's address bar).

 <a href="http://www.findagrave.com/memorial/virtual-cemetery/SAMPLE">SAMPLE TEXT TO BE LINKED TO A VIRTUAL CEMETERY</a>

To create a HORIZONTAL LINE, the HTML code is not recognized, so you can create one using the underscore character ("_"), creating a line like this to divide information or sections:

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To create a BULLET for a list, since the HTML codes for Unordered Lists are unavailable, you can simply copy and paste the Unicode Character • (U+2022) and put it to the left of the line you'd like to appear as a list: 

• List item 1

• List item 2

• List item 3

You can copy and paste it from here, and I recommend saving the character in a plain TXT document to reuse whenever you need it.  These bullets are great for creating a list of EVERYONE buried in the plot.  Since it's not a true bullet point list, you can also use the bullet in a line to separate text like this: Item1 • Item2 • Item3 • Item4 • Item5, which allows for easier scanning and reduced density of text. 

Sample bullet list, created with the unicode bullet, copied and pasted into the page:


 

What's NOT available?

  • You can't center text
  • You can't underline text
  • You can't indent or use multiple spaces in a row
  • You can't use HTML ordered (numbered/lettered) or unordered (bullet point) lists using the HTML code for those features
  • You can't change colors or the size of text
  • You can't use Headers

 

 

 

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Sample Genealogy Worksheet for Individuals

A Sample genealogy worksheet for keeping research summaries on individuals and their spouse(s):


DOWNLOAD FREE FROM GOOGLE DRIVE: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FdCfiGJa85Ry2G1r2IrCkoBlDyUFMBosxgh38DH03H0/edit?usp=sharing

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Reverse Searches and Browsing in U.S. City Directories on Ancestry.com

By James Colgan A lot of people never find out that it is possible to search city and county directories on Ancestry.com (and its wholly-own...