Source Information

This database contains Canadian city and area directories for various years from 1819-1906.

The title page of the 1820 Montreal Directory & c. by Thomas Doige provides a good introduction to what researchers can expect from a directory: “An Alphabetical List of the Merchants, Traders, and Housekeepers Residing in Montreal.”

City directories generally contain an alphabetical listing of its citizens, giving the names of the heads of households, their addresses, and occupations. In addition to the alphabetical portion, a city directory may also contain a business directory, street directory, governmental directory, and listings of town officers, schools, societies, churches, post offices, and other miscellaneous matters of general and local interest.

Use the “Browse this collection” feature to see which cities and years are currently available in this collection.

Why use city directories:

City directories are useful for locating people in a particular place and time. They can give you an exact location for you ancestor during census years, and you can use the information in directories to help find death and probate records, church records, naturalization records, and land records.

Some tips for using directories:

There are usually several parts to a city directory. The section of most interest to the genealogist, of course, is the alphabetical listing of names. Always refer to the page showing abbreviations used in the alphabetical section of the directory. Some abbreviations are quite common, such as h for home or r, for residents who are related to the homeowner and b for boarders who are not related.

Look for people with the same surname residing at the same address. By following names and addresses, directories can sometimes tell you (by implication) which children belong to which household, when they married and started families of their own, and when they established themselves in business. In cases where specific occupation is given, you can search records pertinent to that occupation.

Adapted from Gordon Lewis Remington, “Research in Directories,” in The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy, edited by Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking (Salt Lake City, UT: Ancestry Incorporated, 1997).