In some years, there was more than one directory from competing directory companies, and adding to the resources are Seattle telephone directories for over 60 years.
The city directories provide an unmatched source for finding the exact place a person lived, and often an alternate source to identify residents for a particular time period.
The Mary Clancy boarding with Annie Clancy appears to be a daughter, and the three men who all work at the same place look like sons of Annie as well.
Another later example from a 1955 city directory for Waterbury, Connecticut shows some interesting entries for the name Culotta: The Waterbury entries tell us quite a bit about this family.
People living next door ten years ago, for example, may still live there, and may still remember your relatives.
This is a technique that can be used to find lost relatives.
Some of the privately published directories for a city date back over a hundred and fifty years, and some collections are nearly complete for every year in which a directory was published.
The main listing of names in the book is an alphabetical listing by the names of the residents.But in the back of the book is an index according to the address of the houses, apartments, or businesses —a street index, followed by the house number and names of residents at that address.Using this feature, a city directory can be used to find the names of people living next door to a relative, providing more resources for finding information about people.Here is an example I found in a city directory for the town of Whatcom (now Bellingham), Washington for the year 1893: The five entries above read like a family group sheet!First, the directory informs us that Annie Clancy was a widow, and her deceased husband’s name was Patrick Clancy.