Source Information

Ancestry.com. Missouri State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1881 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.
Original data: Missouri State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1881. Vol. III. St. Louis, MO, USA: Polk and A.C. Danser, 1881.

About Missouri State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1881

This database contains the 1881 Missouri state gazetteer and business directory. It also includes a collection of Missouri laws, a listing of county officers and Missouri courts, information on state government, and a review of Missouri with commercial and general statistics. Gazetteers like this one are very useful sources for genealogists because they help us locate and learn about the places our ancestors lived.

Some family researchers believe it is necessary to find an old map to locate an old town. An old map will not necessarily show all towns that existed when the map was printed, because small towns might have been omitted.

A useful tool for locating towns is a gazetteer, which is a geographical dictionary that lists place names (for example, names of states, territories, counties, cities, towns, and townships) alphabetically for a geographical region. The type of information given in various gazetteers differs, but usually the state and county (and sometimes township--for example, U.S. gazetteers) are listed. This information will help to locate a place name on a map and to determine the town or county in which the major records (for example, vital, land, and probate) are located.

Taken from Schiffman, Carol Mehr, "Geographic Tools: Maps, Atlases, and Gazetteers." In Printed Sources: A Guide to Published Genealogical Records, ed. Kory L. Meyerink (Salt Lake City: Ancestry, 1998).