Dear Ellen, City Directories have been produced yearly since the beginning of the 1900's in most large cities. The format evolves over time. City Directories frequently have several sections, the most common are the Surname alphabetical listings, which are the oldest form or City Directory listing. The second oldest format is the Street Directory sections. In the Street Directory format, each side of each street is listed (east side, west side/ north side, south side. Sometimes the City Directory does all of the east side and then all of the west side of the street, and sometimes it alternates by blocks.(east-west. east-west.) New York also has a long series of City Directories, as do most major cities. Between 1870 and 1970, there are frequently different sections of the Surname list, depending upon racial groupings. The Directory entries are Surname, Given name or Initials, (Spouse's Given Name in parentheses), relationship [widow etc], race [sometimes], occupation, and residence. After telephones became fairly common, one also gets telephone listings. Check out your local regional Library to see how things are listed for the approximate date in which you are interested. Check for a Table of Abbreviations before you end a session with a City Directory. Example: "WUILLEMIN, A., wid. Max, ewf, h. 512 Brooks St." This will decode as "Mrs. A. Wuillemin, widow of Max Wuillemin, employed at the Elgin Watch Factory. She lives/lived at 512 Brook Street." "Schultz, Dallas (Louise), window trimmer, bds 512 Brook St" This means "Mr. Dallas Schultz and his wife Louise Schultz. He is a window trimmer. They board at 512 Brook Street." [They actually lived with his mother and grandmother .] In your case, start in the Known location and with the name of the person you want to research at an address that was valid for that date. Then go forwards and backwards in time until the person is no longer listed under that name. The last entry forward in time will reflect, moving, remarriage date, or death date. The most distant entry backwards in time will reflect the start of the person as an adult wage earner or student. Then you can look for the names of the person's parents, if the name is known. Once you can pinpoint the approximate date of remarriage, you can look up the marriage index information under both the maiden and first marriage surnames. You can also look for an announcement in the local Chicago newspapers. Be sure to record the bibliographic details of each City Directory which you use, as these books were put out yearly, and in some places two or more companies were working in the same year in the same town. Photocopy the pages with your Surname under research and write the bibliographic stuff on the top or back of the page. You may be picking up unknown siblings or cousins as you research your person. When you stack up the data on graph paper in a year by year fashion and look for things that change and things that remain the same, you will have the beginnings of a family history. However, you need as many yearly entries as possible to get the maximum data from this resource. It is possible that your person remarried, or that Edmonds is her maiden Surname. You will not find young children listed in City Directories. NYC may not have required birth certificates to be recorded at that date, or you person may have emigrated from England or Europe. You should check the 1900, 1910 and 1920 Federal Census Index books and see if your person shows up in that Census. Someone recently reported that some of the larger cities have their City Directories on the LSD microfilm at LSD Family Centers. I have never tried that source. Most City Libraries have the City Directory Series at the Main Branch. Many Historical Societies also have the City Directories for their area. At 03:13 PM 2/10/00 -0500, you wrote: >I sent this to the RESEARCH-HOW-TO list and someone >suggested trying this list. If anyone has any ideas, please >let me know! > >I am doing genealogical research, I am stuck on one person >who was born around 1896 and died in the 1950's. I have >very little information: her daughter's birth certificate has >her listed as born in NYC with a different surname (Edmonds) than >her daughter's SS5 application (McCaffrey). I searched >the NYC birth index for both surnames with no success. To make it >even more of a challenge, she remarried, moved to another >state (unknown!) and died. > >She was living at 6101 Langley St as Hazel Baier when her >daughter was born in 1922. She moved nearby to another address in >Cook county that I know she was living at in the mid 50's (I have >this at home in my records.) I thought if I could at least find her >married name I might be able to find her death certificate. > >I see listed in FHL lots of city directories for Chicago but only up >until late 1920's. Are there later city directories or phone >books (that are searchable by address?) > >Or does anyone have a clue what I can do next? > >Thanks much! >Ellen > > > >==== COOK-CO-IL Mailing List ==== >IMPORTANT! This list is archived at the new threaded archives at: >http://archiver.rootsweb.com/ >Do not post anything that you do not want the world to see. Posts are >NOT removable from the archives. If you send it to the list, it is in >the archives forever! Please keep this in mind when posting.