Collection Information
Ancestry is home to an extensive collection of city and county directories, as well as telephone books, professional directories, church centennial books, school lists, and yearbooks. City and county directories typically contain entries for working family members and include name, occupation, and home and business addresses. Early phone books may contain similar information in addition to the phone number.
Church histories and records may include indexes to parish records and in some cases, actual church records. The collection also includes many church histories and centennial books, which can contain the names of members of the congregation, as well as historical background information on the origins of the church.
Also among the collections in this category are school alumni lists and yearbooks which can be rich in details about your ancestor's school experience and may even include a photograph.
Professional directories that list those in engaged in a particular field round out this category.
They often include biographical information and a short paragraph of the person's history within the profession. Like professional directories, organizational directories are lists of a specialized nature such as names of university alumni or members of fraternities. They may include addresses as well as dates of birth and death.
Directories and member lists are typically compilations of information about people who belonged to various associations and groups or lived within city boundaries. They can be thought of as the predecessors to the modern-day phone book and usually list names, addresses, and sometimes the occupations of your ancestors.
Once you locate an ancestor, you can learn information such as his street address, occupation, and how many years he spent in that area.
