Source Information

Jacobs, Steven comp.. Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., Directory, 1805 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000.
Original data: Directory of Boston City Residents. Boston, MA, USA: n.p., 1805.

About Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., Directory, 1805

In the early 1800's, Boston, Massachusetts, was one of America's busiest and most vibrant commercial ports. It attracted visitors and brought in goods from other ports along the Atlantic coast as well as Europe and Asia. A center of banking, shipping, and manufacturing, many of America's first large businesses called Boston home. This directory of over 4,600 Boston inhabitants reveals a wide range of people and occupations, including bankers, attorneys, fruit vendors, soap boilers, shoe makers, innkeepers, sea captains, and grocery merchants. Copied directly from the 1805 Boston City Directory, this database includes first name, last name, occupation, and street address of many of Boston's residents and businesses. From the street addresses researchers can compare information in this database with census information of the same time period. Though this directory lists few women, many fathers and sons are listed together. This is especially evident when they shared both a business and an address. This database can be a valuable resource for researchers interested in learning more about their ancestors who, in 1805, lived in Boston, Massachusetts.

City directories are primarily useful for locating people in a particular place and time. They can tell you generally where an ancestor lived and give an exact location for census years. They are also useful for linkage with sources other than censuses.

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, for it is there that you may find your ancestor.

Whenever you use a directory, however, it is important to refer to the page showing abbreviations used in the alphabetical section of the directory, usually following the name in each entry. Some abbreviations are quite common, such as h for home or r, indicating residence. There may even be a subtle distinction between r for residents who are related to the homeowner and b for boarders who are not related.

Some city directories list adult children who lived with their parents but were working or going to school. Look for persons of the same surname residing at the same address. If analyzed and interpreted properly, these annual directories can 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.

Once an ancestor has been found in a city directory, there are several ways the information can be used to gain access to, or link with, such sources as censuses, death and probate records, church records, naturalization records, and land records.

Taken from Chapter 11: Research in Directories, The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy by Gordon Lewis Remington; edited by Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking (Salt Lake City, UT: Ancestry Incorporated, 1997).