I got a note from my good friend, Regina Negrycz, this morning – stating that the Ancestral Beginnings City Directory database is now open for membership.
Regina is a professional genealogist who is most likely best known for specializing in DNA research. She is a popular speaker on the subject of DNA. She also has a love of the genealogy-related information found in city directories. Ancestral Beginnings is producing a database of city directory data. As each directory’s database is finalized, it will be added to the Ancestral Beginnings website. The database will be growing monthly, if not weekly.
To date, the database contains 26 directories with 238,440 entries. Regina has over 1,000 directories in her inventory covering the years 1891-1972, throughout the U.S. and British Columbia.
The directory can be searched by the following fields, either singularly or combined:
- surname
- forename
- business name
- street name
- city
This database is also unique in that it can serve as a reverse address look-up. As more directories are added, a history of owners per residence can be obtained for those cities in the inventory covering multiple years.
The following directories are all currently included in the Ancestral Beginnings database:
- 1955 Acushnet MA
- 1963 Anacortes WA
- 1950 Baker OR
- 1959 Beaverton OR
- 1960 Boise (Ada County) ID
- 1971 Casa Grande AZ
- 1961 Cleveland TX
- 1961 Cottage Grove OR
- 1962 Cottage Grove OR
- 1962 Deadwood SD
- 1964 Deadwood SD
- 1972 Deadwood SD
- 1957 Ellensburg WA
- 1951 Elizabeth NJ
- 1968 Enumclaw WA
- 1968 Ephrata/Soap Lake WA
- 1960 Forest Grove OR
- 1964 Forest Grove OR
- 1955 Fort Morgan CO
- 1930 Glendale AZ
- 1960 Jasper TX
- 1962 Ketchikan AK
- 1962 Livingston MT
- 1954 Loveland CO
- 1969 Quincy WA
- 1948 Reno NV
As another example – Elizabeth, NJ contains dates of death with age at death, location of new residence if moved within the directory year, and for females who have married/re-married, and the name of their spouse. The Colorado and Oregon directories include the children’s names and ages.
I happen to have a passion for city directories myself – and have owned many hundreds of them over the years. With downsizing I’ve passed most on to genealogy libraries – keeping a few that specifically pertained to our family. In looking at the listing of Regina’s currently posted directories, I see that she posted data for Enumclaw, Washington in 1968. I was born in Enumclaw. My sister, Bev, married Ralph Hubbard there in about 1953. I was the Bible boy at the wedding. They moved to Wyoming where Ralph worked in the oil fields, but by the early 1960s moved into King County outside of Enumclaw. In searching the 1968 Enumclaw Directory listing, I spot several Hubbards, including Wilbur Hubbard – Ralph’s father. Also noted was Dayton, Ralph’s brother, who lived in the nearby small Pierce County town of Buckley. See illustration below:
I then noted that a directory for Fort Morgan Colorado in 1955 could be searched in the Ancestral Beginnings directory database. Doing so, I found Ralph’s father still living there – over 1300 miles from where his family finally settled in Washington State. See the “details” illustration dealing with Wilbur in 1955.
Memberships are available on an annual basis only, and the starting membership fee is $20. The membership listing is private. Click on this link or on any illustration to go to the website.
As an aside, Regina will be teaching a DNA track at the Salt Lake Christmas Tour again this – also consulting with attendees during the week.
