Last night I stayed up too late (I know you've never done this!). I haven't had a chance to do much research on my family lately, and I just had that itch. After a recent discussion about city directories on a mailing list, I was inspired to play around with some of the directories online at Ancestry.com. Since the Brooklyn Directory was added in late June, I have only had a couple of opportunities to really explore it, so I began there.
Directories are wonderful tools that have been printed for large cities and an amazing number of small towns in the U.S.; sometimes they date back to the 1700s. They can help us locate our families and trace their movements from year to year, giving us a much clearer picture of where to look for other records. When directories are available in database form, they present even more opportunities for exploration. Today, I'd like to share some techniques you can use to dig up clues on your ancestry.
The Straight Search
I focused my efforts on Edwin Dyer, who was a police captain in Brooklyn. We have some great information about him, but scant information about his parentage. We know his mother's name was Eliza Nelson, but we don't have much on his father. His father's name was actually Durain, according to Bishop Loughlin's Dispensations, Diocese of Brooklyn, 1859-1866, Vol. 1, by Joseph Silinonte. (Look for more on these wonderful records later this week in an article by Mr. Silinonte.) A great-aunt told us that his father was a French sailor and was lost at sea. Eliza's second marriage was to James Dyer, and Edwin took on his stepfather's name. We have been at a dead end for a long time here!
My uncle had traced Edwin in other directories found at the Long Island Historical Society, but the years 1888-90 were not on his list, so the first thing I did was to look up Dyer. Unfortunately, there were quite a few people listed with "dyer" as their occupation, so I had to wade through a bit, but I eventually found an entry for Edwin Dyer at 69 Johnson. I could have gone right to it by including his first name, but I wanted to see what other Dyers were living in the area. An Alfred Dyer caught my eye. Edwin and his wife had three sons they named Alfred. All three died very young. Although it would be a step relationship, if this Alfred was who he named his children after, it might be worth investigating.
An important thing I noticed pertains to the arrangement of the entries. Since there are two directories included in this particular database, the way in which results are sorted is important. When I searched for the term "dyer," the listings for the 1888-89 directory were listed first, alphabetically by name (last name, then first). The sort order I found was:
1888-89 Directory:
Surnames beginning with A-Dy that were dyers by trade.
Dyer surname listings.
Surnames beginning with E that were dyers by trade.
Then the 1889-90 directory followed in the same manner.
This may differ from database to database, but it is important to gauge how the database is sorting. If I had not taken the time to look through it and determine the sort order, I would have just found the first listings and assumed that the rest of the hits were for people that were dyers by trade; I could have possibly missed entries for my family.
Search by Address or Street
One of the greatest features of these databases is the ability to search by address. You can plug in your ancestor's address and see if anyone else is living at that address with them. Often several related families lived together at one address, and this can be a great way to find parents, in-laws, siblings, and other collateral relatives.
You can also try looking for surrounding addresses to see if neighbors may have also been family. (Ex: I tried 67 Johnson, 68 Johnson, 70 Johnson, etc., in my search for Edwin Dyer's extended family.) By using MapQuest to pinpoint nearby intersections, you might even want to try looking around the corner. (Note: Street numbering changes are common, and what was 69 Johnson in 1890 may not be 69 Johnson today, but for our purposes here, we don’t need it to be an exact science.)
Well, I came up dry on the Johnson locality searches, but in reviewing the entries my uncle had found in previous directories, I noted that they lived at four different addresses on Tillary in the years before 1881, which was the last prior address I had. I searched for these addresses and found Edwin's mother-in-law and brother-in-law at one of them. Their last name, Dooner, was listed as Doner in the 1888-89 directory, and the 1889-90 directory had misspelled it as both Donev and Douer. I would never have thought to check for these!
For those entries that are found with business and home addresses listed, you may want to also try the address search on the business to see if there were other family members working together in the same shop or business.
Search by Occupation
In addition to family-run businesses, you may have seen the same occupation passed on from father to son or shared by brothers, and this can be used to narrow a search.
Another of my ancestors was a hatter named Thomas Tobin in New York City. Although he moved to Rochester, I had heard family stories that said he had a family business, and since he had started out in New York City, I checked the directory for 1869 online and searched for "tobin hats." I was rewarded with an entry for:
Tobin Peter C. hats, 25 Howard, h 286 Hudson av. B'klyn
If I make a connection between these two hatters, I may be able to find some clues as to Thomas's parentage, which has also long been a dead end.
And Don’t Forget Soundex
The 1890 Census Reconstruction Project, which includes the Brooklyn directories I used to search for Edwin Dyer and his family, also allows for Soundex searches, which can be very helpful in locating misspelled names. Since I had no luck in locating any Durains in the area, I tried this as well. Although I had to wade through 350 hits, I did locate a couple that caught my eye. One was for a Henry Duren, who was listed with an occupation of "Nautical Instruments." Given my aunt's story of Edwin's father Durain being lost at sea, I may go after him too. It's a long shot, but when you're stuck on a dead end, it's better than nothing!
Resources
Further Reading
"City Directories," by Brian Andersson
(Ancestry Daily News, 1/11/1999)
Juliana Smith is the editor of the Ancestry Daily News and author of The Ancestry Family Historian's Address Book. She has written for Ancestry Magazine and Genealogical Computing. Juliana can be reached by e-mail at: editor@ancestry-inc.com, but regrets that she is unable to assist with personal research.
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