When I first learned that many city's had made their old directories available online, I thought they were only useful if you knew your ancestor's exact address. Over time I have learned that they have far more uses than just that. I personally use Internet Archive when working with directories because it has a vast range of cities and years.
1. Family movement
This is by far the most obvious use for a directory. Just as their name implies, they tell us where people lived which means we can use them to chart our ancestor's movement. What I find most fascinating is when these addresses are plotted on both a timeline and a map. Together this dual plotting approach gives us an idea of how frequently they moved and how major each move was. It also can tell us if they ever returned to an address.
I have taken the mapping a step further and added the people in an ancestor's FAN club. This can give a better idea of where and when an ancestor may have met that person. The clearest way that I have found to do this is by colour coding the arrows showing their movement. For example, I knew that my great grandparents were in a car crash with one other couple back in the 1950's. When I applied the above mapping I not only learned that my great grandmother and this other women were neighbours as children, but also that the two couples had lived together during the late 1920's. Had I not applied this technique I would not have had as strong of an understanding to how well they all knew each other.
2. Same name, different people
Newspapers are a great resource, however they dont always provide enough information to know if they are talking about the person you are searching for. This is where city directories come in. Because city directories have an alphabetically organized section you can easily check the number of people which share the same name or even the number of people with the same surname. What I also find helpful is that you can see where each of these people live and what their occupations were. When doing this keep in mind that the directories information could be as old as one year prior to the publication year. For this reason I often expand my search to the directories to one year on either side of the newspaper's publication date. The reason why it's also good to check the previous year is to know if someone of the same name was not featured in the previous year. People were only listed when they reached a working age and lived in the area.
Not finding who you are looking for? Consider those who are listed with a first initial, by a nickname, or those who went by a common variation of the surname.
3. Occupational changes
This can be a tricky one to track in a directory if the person is constantly on the move and there are others that share the same name. I have found that the best way to do this is to create a flow chart of sorts. List the years across the top of the sheet, then list each person, their occupation, and address beneath the respective year. Over time you will see that some of the people retain the same address or occupation and thus can be ruled out. I prefer to draw a connecting line to show the movement of a single person over time. The chart ends up looking something like this:
Notice in the above fictional example how there are three different men that all share the same name - albeit in different variations. By process of elimination in 1921 we know that the second John has moved but retained his occupation. We also know that the third man went by a nickname - Jack. By 1922 there is a problem. The first and second man have both moved and changed occupations. The 1923 directory was required to determine which one was which in 1922. Although this example is not from an actual directory it contains many of the problems that are often encountered and demonstrates how this strategy can be used to solve them.
4. Family and roommates
When trying to locate someone in a directory, most people only check the section which is alphabetized by surname. They dont check the other section which is alphabetized by street. The reason why I always check this other section is because it can tell us quite a bit about who else lived at that same address. This can be helpful when trying to locate someone who was not listed in the surname section of the directory. Checking the street section can help clear up some confusion that results from occupational changes. For example it can reveal what working age relatives were also living in the home as well as any lodgers or boarders. These people can be the clue needed to stop tracking someone in the directories.
5. Check for a legend
Each directory featured their own legend of abbreviations which were used to describe someone's occupation, address, home ownership, and if a woman was widowed. If I am going to be working with a particular city's directories for the first time I use snipping tool to capture the abbreviations page then save it to my computer. Below is an example of the abbreviations legend from the City of Toronto's 1910 directory.
6. Read the location description for the street
Over time the face of a city changes dramatically. Streets that existed a hundred years ago are gone or have had their names changed. Finding out exactly where that street was can be a challenge, especially if you arent in the habit of reading the location description given in the directory. From my experience, at least one of the other streets mentioned in this description still exist and at the very least can give you an idea of the area that your ancestor lived in. On the page below I have drawn red boxes around the descriptions for three different streets in the City of Toronto's 1912 directory.
Notice that each of the above descriptions are quite specific - each mentions at least two other streets and the ward number. More times than not these are major streets that still exist today.
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