Source Information

LaRue, Barry, comp.. Ypsilanti, Michigan, U.S., City Directory, 1910 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000.
Original data: 1910 R.L. Polk City directory of Ypslanti, Michigan. Detroit, MI, USA: R. L. Polk Publishing, 1910.

About Ypsilanti, Michigan, U.S., City Directory, 1910

Ypsilanti is a small town in southeastern Michigan. Situated near Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti is home to Eastern Michigan University. EMU, the oldest teacher's college west of the Allegheny mountains, was founded in 1849. Prior to 1900 Ypsilanti was the site of many industrial and commercial concerns. The Hay and Todd Mfg. Co. made one piece union suits. Coffee roasters, buggy whip sockets and dress stays were all made in Ypsilanti. Mineral wells were sunk in the 1880s and allowed for several spas and sanitariums to be built. During World War II the B24 "Liberator" was manufactured at Willow Run and workers flowed into Ypsilanti overtaxing housing and city services but contributing to the nation's war effort. Today Ypsilanti has a population of around 24,000 and has an active preservation movement and a large historic district.

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).