City directories are published listings of residents or businesses and their addresses. A city directory places an individual or a business in a specific location at a particular time. A directory may list the residents or businesses alphabetically by name or by address or both. Often, only the head of a household is listed. City directories have been published at varying intervals in New York City since 1786. It was not until the mid‑19th century that city directories began including immigrants as well as established residents.
Telephone directories are published listings of telephone subscribers in a geographic area or of subscribers to services provided by a telephone company in the geographic area. The first telephone directory was published in 1878, though many people did not have telephones until after World War II. Telephone directories are usually revised annually. Subscriber names are generally listed alphabetically, together with their postal or street addresses and telephone numbers. Generally, every subscriber in the geographic coverage area is listed unless the subscriber requests exclusion of their number from the directory, often for a fee.
City and telephone directories are particularly useful in connection with research in census records. For those censuses that have been indexed by name, the researcher usually does not have to know the precise address where a person was living in order to locate him or her. For censuses without name indexes, however, a census search requires a street address. Census takers and census indexers also sometimes misspell names in ways that make them difficult to find. . An alphabetized list of residents or telephone subscribers, with their addresses, can be obtained from a city or telephone directory published in a year close to the census year. Therefore, if you are unable to locate a person in census records when searching by name, you may find them instead by browsing the census records for a particular address at which they had lived.
Prior to 1933/34, only heads of households and other employed adults were listed in the New York City Directories. A married housewife rarely was included. Because a widow usually was listed with her deceased husband's name (such as Mrs. Tom Jones), it is possible to use that entry as an indication of when the husband died. That clue can point to death records, obituaries, probate records, and cemetery plots.
New York City’s 1933/34 city directories were unusual for their thoroughness, their inclusion of all adults in a household (wife and adult children), and even the apartment number. After that year, telephone directories became the only analogous source.
It is important to conduct a year‑by‑year search for a particular individual or family. Sometimes a person disappears from the directory for a year or two and then shows up again, sometimes at the same address. Careful examination of city directories can identify other individuals with the same surname. Subsequent research may show that these same‑surnamed people are relatives not known previously.