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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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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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. _______________________________________________________________________
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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A number of directories available on microfiche, as well as online.
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Telephone directories in the collections of the U.S. Library of Congress.
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PDF directory of the City, County, and Regional Directories held by the State Library of Pennsylvania.
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Guide to the various kinds of directories, including specialty directories, in the holdings of the Free Library of Philadelphia.
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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)
- 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.:
- Ancestry.com U.S. City Directories collection:
- Available Years: 1861 to 1925 (1869 Missing); 1930; 1935; 1950
- Fold3.com:
- Available Years: 1785, 1791, 1793-1811, 1813, 1814, 1816-1825, 1828-1831, 1833-1835, 1837-1919, 1921, 1922
- Archive.org:
- Available Years: 1785 to 1867 (with some years missing)
- Google Advanced Book Search:
- (limited number of years available)
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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.
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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.
_____________________________________________________________________ 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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