Gazetteers and Genealogy

People tell us “I’ve got Ancestry.  Why do I need a gazetteer of the town where my family lived?”

That’s a fair question.  We’ll use the Childs’ Gazetteer and Business Directory of Sullivan County for 1872-73, which we publish as a download as an example here.

As it turns out, we use Ancestry heavily both in our own genealogy research and in writing local history (which we also do).  Being able to hypothesize a family tree for a local history figure on short notice, and work out marriages, births, and that sort of thing on the fly is a little-recognized capability Ancestry is great for.  We’ll write another post about that soon, but this one is about the use of gazetteers in your genealogical research.

First off, gazetteers (also local directories, business directories, and that kind of thing) usually contain a few components.  Often there’s a short narrative about the locality.  We got our feet wet in genealogy in Sullivan County, in New York State, and conveniently we publish a gazetteer from there.

These volumes are notable, first, for listings of the families (usually the head of household) and the businesses in each locality, normally in alphabetic order. Here’s a sample: From any of those listings you know several things that you’re not apt to find as a hint in Ancestry. 

Also, there’s often a short article about the town or city, its history and its industries.  Frequently you’ll find a list of houses of worship.  Perhaps there will be ads for local businesses (selling ads was one way publishers of directories made their money).  You may find listings of organizations, and often lists of other things about the locality that were meaningful when the gazetteer was compiled.  You’ll almost always find the occupation of the head of household listed. And, best of all, gazetteers were normally published in non-census years, providing a good way to check where a person or family might be outside the years ending in 0.

In addition to the Childs’ Gazetteer and Business Directory of Sullivan County for 1872-73 that we use as an example, we publish several others, including:

–The Erie County, NY Directory for 1924

Genesee County Business Directory and Gazetteer (1882).  

Child’s Gazetteer and Business Directory for Lewis County for 1872-73 

Port Jervis City Directory (1922)

Child’s Gazetteer and Business Directory for Wayne County for 1867-68

Boyd’s 1908 Street Guide for Philadelphia and Camden

Westbrook, Maine:  Directory for 1888

Blue Book of Newton, MA for 1910

Worcester Directory for 1871

Nevada, Missouri Directory for 1905

Tax Book and Valuation of Property, Town of West Greenwich, for 1889

White’s Peoria County Directory for 1919

Directory of All Business and Professional Men of Ashtabula County, Ohio (1895)

In future articles we’ll discuss some other obscure material we publish that you just might find helpful in your research, and, generally, you won’t find on Ancestry, as good as it is.

 

 

 

Genesee County Gazetteer for 1882

We are very happy to report that the Genesee County Gazetteer for 1882 is once again available.

This item, originally published by A. J. Craft, is 455 pages long, and most of it is of interest to someone researching in Genesee County, New York, today.  While roughly 140 pages of this directory are dedicated to the legal practices and customs in business in those days — which can be useful background information — it applies generally and isn’t specific to Genesee County.  It also includes a lengthy article on James G. Garfield, the President who was assassinated in 1881 — which the text calls “…the saddest history of the American Nation”) — which is of more general interest.

The remainder (and by far the largest part of the volume) is of great interest to genealogists and historians today.  Included are histories, including names of early settlers, of Genesee County (and of the Holland Patent) and its constituent towns, Genesee County business by type, and perhaps most important, a directory of individuals and businesses in the county, arranged by town.
The Post Office, occupation, and number of acres for farmers, are included.  This directory section is 230 pages long. 

There is also a decent amount of advertising.  These items were heavily used in businesses and were rarely retained, so this is pretty much a rarity. 

It was formerly included in our Genesee County Collection CD-ROM, which has been discontinued.

More information about the Genesee County Gazetteer for 1882 on our Genesee County page.

 

Sesquicentennial of Genesee County

We are very pleased to be able to again offer the Sesquicentennial of Genesee County, NY — 1802 -1952 — this time as a download.  It had previously been included (some would say “submerged) in our Genesee County Collection CD-ROM.  Since we’ve discontinued that CD, this book now gets to stand on its own, and, perhaps, to get the attention it deserves.

This is a nicely done sesquicentennial book; there’s no question about that.  The County clearly organized thoroughly for the celebration, and committees were devised to deal with all the various aspects of such a multi-day event.  The book has a number of historical articles that are uniformly well-written and appear to be consistent with what we know of the history of the area.  The list of sponsors of the Sesquicentennial runs several pages, and with the listings of the committees, one senses that a fairly high percentage of the 1952 population got their name into this book in one form or another.  The pictures (black and white) are of good quality.  The advertisements — as usual a useful glimpse of the local economy — are numerous and well-produced.

If you have a historical or family interest in Genesee County, you will probably want to have the Sesquicentennial of Genesee County NY to refer to.  You can read more about it (and about our other Genesee County offerings) on the Genesee County page of our main website.

This was previously part of our CD-ROM:

Grange Directories from Genesee County NY

As we continue our process of migrating information from our discontinued CD-ROMs to availability as downloads, we are very happy to announce the availability of two Grange directories from Genesee County NY in the 1930s.

While the Grange still exists in some rural areas of the United States, the “Patrons of Husbandry” has been in a long decline since the 19th century in the United States.  An organization that fulfilled several functions for rural farm families — it was a social organization, an organization for young people, a unified voice in speaking to legislatures, a charitable organization — in an age before telephones, radio, television, and the internet, it was vital.  We think that these directories represented a resurgence of the local Granges due to the Great Depression, so they are social documents.

Because they list members and officers, as well as businesses catering to the agricultural sector, the Grange directories from Genesee County NY will be useful to genealogists tracing families in Genesee County, of course.  Those interested in cultural history and social history will appreciate the clear view of agrarian life in upstate New York in the 1930s these represent.

Of a few Grange directories we’ve encountered, these are by some measure the most complete and likely represent a good picture of much of Genesee County at these points in time.  The two that we have are the ones for 1934 and 1938.  They previously appeared on our Genesee County Collection CD-ROM, which we have discontinued.

Do have a look.  You can purchase them here on our Genesee County page.

More items from our

Genesee County, NY

Genesee County, NY has been one of our favorites for a long time.  Long-time customers will recall that we issued a CD-ROM called the “Genesee County Collection” some years ago.  Even before that, we enjoyed collaborating with some of the folks in the Genesee County Genealogical Society when we republished an important book about the history of Western New York State.

Well, when we made the difficult decision to leave the CD-ROM business (today it’s really old technology) and take advantage of the ability to deliver files instantly via the internet, we had a lot of content on CDs that we needed to make available.  Genesee County, NY, for some of the reasons listed above, was one of the earlier CDs we began converting.

So far, we’ve made two pieces of the CD-ROM available as downloads.  Here they are:

  • The O-AT-KAN yearbook from 1953 at LeRoy Central School
  • The Genesee County chapter from French’s Gazetteer of the State of New York (1860)

Take a moment to glance as our Genesee County page on our main website for these two, and for other Genesee County material we have available as downloads.  And check back soon, because we’ll be making more material from the CD-ROM available as downloads very soon.

Thanks!