This week, I was able to combine two of my favorite things—maps and family history. Some new AncestryView city directory CD-ROMs arrived for me to examine, and I had a bit of fun plotting my Brooklyn Dennis and Poland/Polen family on an 1891 Rand McNally Brooklyn map I have. My daughter thought this looked like great fun, so I set her to work searching the other side of the map with her own magnifying glass.

Directories are great resources for locating family, and these particular directories fill an important gap left when the 1890 U.S. Federal Census burned. By placing our ancestors in a certain location, they open up other regional record sources. When we know our ancestors' addresses, we can check local churches for religious records, as well as court records, school records, cemetery records, and a number of other resources. Directories also typically provide an occupation and work address, and when wives suddenly appear as widowed, we can estimate a death date for the husband, which can lead to death records.

Electronic databases of directories also open up new search options, such as searching by address to see who else was living nearby—on the same street or on surrounding streets. And with the new AncestryView CDs, I picked up a few tips I want to share.

Searching for Dennis Families in Brooklyn
Those of you who have been reading the Ancestry Daily News for a while will have noticed that a large number of my ancestors are from Brooklyn, New York, which can be good and bad. It is helpful because I can focus on one area, but it is also easy to get distracted and start searching for everyone at once, which can create confusion. When that happens, suddenly I've lost sight of my clear goals and good intentions, and my research is taking me, as Pat Hatcher says, "hither, thither, and yon!" (see Pat's article "Where Will Your Research Take You in 2001?").

This time I was determined, and I set out to look for the siblings of my great-great-grandfather William Dennis. In particular, I was searching for more information on his parents, another William Dennis and his wife Mary Poland (or Maria Polen). We have precious little on these two apart from their names on a death record and a marriage dispensation found in Bishop Loughlin's Dispensations, Diocese of Brooklyn, 1859-1866, Vol. 1, compiled by Joseph Silinonte. I was hoping to use this directory to locate possible siblings of the younger William that may have created more records with references to their parents (hopefully with a little more detail!).

I began by pulling a listing of all of the Dennises in the directory. Since the CD contains directories from a number of cities and counties in New York, I narrowed it down by only searching Lain's Brooklyn City Directory for 1888-89 and Lain's Brooklyn City Directory for 1889-90. (Although I could have searched them individually—since the number of hits wasn't too overwhelming—I searched both by entering only "Lain's" in the Directory field.)

AncestryView uses "tags" that allow you to select items and view only the items that interest you. I tagged all of the Dennis entries and, after selecting "View" and "Tagged Records," was given a page that listed all of the complete entries; I printed this out. (These entries can also be copied and pasted into another document for saving in my genealogical database files, which I plan to do after sorting them out.)

Time to Pull Out the Maps
By searching both directories, I was able to find the same individuals in both and see who had moved during that time. After locating my William Dennis, I did a search on the address, which also turned up two of his sons who were living at home. The given names for many of the Dennis listings caught my eye. William had 10 children, (seven sons and three daughters), and I saw that many of the other entries had the same given names. Since some of his children were too young at this time to be working and living on their own, this was very interesting.

I pulled out my 1891 map and began looking for addresses. Employing the use of Mapquest to help locate the addresses (keeping in mind that streets may have been renumbered since then), and with the help of a magnifying glass my hubby supplied, I began my search.

My daughter decided that with our magnifying glasses in hand, looking for clues, we were now "Detective Madelon" and "Detective Mommy." While Detective Madelon searched for the word "green," Detective Mommy looked for a number of street addresses and noted what neighborhoods the addresses fell in. Even with the magnifying glasses, it was eye-straining and tedious work, but when I finished and browsed through my findings, I noted that most of the addresses fell within three areas of Brooklyn. I also noticed on the map that the areas I was focusing on were connected by the Brooklyn Elevated R.R. and the King's Co. Elevated R.R. Hmmm, another interesting revelation!

I went back to the directories and, after searching, removed the tags I had set earlier. (I could have just re-clicked on the tag entry to remove the tag, but to do this quickly, I went back to the Library List and chose the CD over again, which removed them all.) I did another search for Dennis in Lain's and then, referencing my list, printed out separate lists for each of the neighborhoods. Later I will use these lists to try to put together family profiles using information found in previous and subsequent censuses. (C'mon Images Online!)

From these lists, I also did some searches by address and printed out the results of these searches so I could see who lived in the same dwellings as the more promising families.

Browsing and Wild Card Searches
It was getting late, but with Detective Madelon soundly in bed (where I probably should have been too!), I kept on. I had also noticed that some of the individuals only appeared on one or the other of the directories, and while this could mean a number of things—moving to/from the area, deaths, a young man coming of age and first appearing in a directory, etc.—it also could be the result of a misspelling. So I began playing around with the search functions available on the CD. I returned to the home page and browsed the entries by clicking on the letter "D," but with so many directories containing more than a million and a half entries, this was a bit cumbersome to say the least. So I decided to try a wildcard search using an asterisk. By putting in "Den*" and specifying "Lain's" in the directory field, I was able to search all of the names that started with "DEN." I found a lot of missing individuals in this way.

I also did some searches for William Dennis' mother's maiden name, and I found an entry for a Eugene Polien whose address turned out to be only a few short blocks from William. A search for his address also turned up entries for him with his names spelled Pollen and Pullen.

I continued on with a number of searches, and by the end of the evening (I won't even tell you what time it was!), I had also experimented with the Search Wizard, which seemed to allow for more flexibility than the basic search on the main page.

Next Steps
I still have a lot of sorting to do and more searches I would like to perform, but once the information I collected has been organized, I will go on to also plot what churches are in the area, check federal censuses from before and after this time period, and consult state censuses that were taken in between. I know I have my work cut out for me, but by knowing the names of others with that surname, I hope to be able to sort through the individuals, form a picture of the various families, and distinguish which of them are relations.

So if you have not worked with directories, put on your detective cape and magnifying glass and dig in. You'll have a lot of fun!

Links and Further Reading

• "Fun with City Directories," by Juliana Smith (Ancestry Daily News, 9/25/2000)
  
• "City Directories," by Brian Andersson (Ancestry Daily News, 1/11/1999)
  
• "Marriage Dispensations: An Untapped Source for Catholics and Non-Catholics," by Joseph Silinonte (Ancestry Daily News, 9/28/2000)
  
• Directories Online at Ancestry.com (subscriber databases)
  
• Advanced Search Page for the 1890 Census Substitute
  
• MapQuest
  
• Bishop Loughlin's Dispensations, Diocese of Brooklyn, 1859-1866, Vol. 1, compiled by Joseph Silinonte

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.

An archive of her Monday column, The Family History Compass, is available on the Ancestry.com site.