Читать книгу Collins Tracing Your Irish Family History - Ryan Tubridy, Anthony Adolph - Страница 26

Directories started in England in 1677 as lists of prominent merchants but rapidly spread abroad, proliferating in the 19th century and flourishing until the spread of telephone directories after World War II. They generally listed tradesmen, craftsmen, merchants, professionals, farmers, clergy, gentry and nobility, but as time passed, coverage grew broader. From the mid-19th century onwards, they usually comprised four sections: Commercial (tradesmen and professionals listed alphabetically), Trades (individual alphabetical lists for each trade or profession), Streets (tradesmen and private residents listed house by house) and Court (originally the heads of wealthier households, but this rapidly became an alphabetical listing of the heads of all families save the poor). They provide a snapshot of the communities in which ancestors lived, including useful historical sketches and descriptions of the places concerned. By searching a series of directories, you can work out when ancestors lived and died. Bear in mind, though, that directories were usually printed a year or so after the data had been collected, so were always slightly out of date. Directories also provide addresses for manual census searches.