Janesville, Rock County, Wisconsin, U.S., Directory, 1931

The estimated population of Janesville in 1931 was 24,000. This database lists the individual, spouses name, occupation, place of work & place of residence, rather a householder or resides/rooms. Janesville was incorporated as a city in 1853. From a settlement of less than 300 persons in 1840, Janesville grew to 3,000 persons in 1850; 8,789 in 1870; 13,185 in 1900; and to 22,186 in 1925. Most of the residents were natives of New York and New England states. Janesville was a small but modern city. The commercial district boasted concrete curbs and gutters, electric lighting, and electric street rail cars. General Motors' Chevrolet plant and Parker Pen were the area's principal employers.

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).

Updates:
14 Jan 2021: Additional records created though database improvements.