Home > Fort Wayne > City Directories of Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana
City Directories of Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana
Fort Wayne city directories start in 1858 with business and city resident addresses. Public domain copies before 1923 are listed on the City Directories page and embeded within the Timeline pages. There were a few Allen County only directories such as 1906.
City Directories Video Tip of the Day: See what city directories can do for you!
The very first city directory has the name R. S. Robertson written inside the cover indicating it was owned by Colonel Robert S. Robertson. See the very first Volume 1- 1858-1859 directory. Directories before and after 1890 are one way to recreate information for the missing 1890 census.
It is very helpful to look through a few city directories to see how much information they contain. Online digital copies have been OCR'd, (Optical Character Recoginition) meaning we can do keyword searches to quickly find words we may not find by manually reading through each page. Like everything digital, some words will be missed when searching online. There are no surname indexes. While the names are listed alphabetical, some issues have a couple of pages of names that arrived too late to be included alphabetically.
The directories are also a city guide and business mirror. A Table of Contents will list businesses, boundaries of wards (used in early census records), churches, city and county officers, index to advertisements, schools, banks, incorporated institutions, secret and benevolent societies, trades, professions, post offices, public buildings, street directory (for old street names and locations) and more. The Genealogy Center has over 57,000 city directories, 11,000 on microfilm and several hundred on microfiche. They have an online catalog and some may be on PERSI. Read more in Finding and Using Directories in The Genealogy Center by John published July 07, 2013 in The Genealogy Center blog.
Research Tools & Tips: Cluster Research, City/County Directories and Social Security Data uploaded Aug 26, 2021 by AAGSFW Fort Wayne on YouTube African American Genealogical Society of Fort Wayne (AAGSFW) Research Tools & Tips: Cluster Research, City/County Directories and Social Security Data In this month's Research Tools & Tips training, Dr. Al Brothers - Vice-Chair of the AAGSFW - explains how to use indexes and lists to further your genealogy research. Add more tools to your research toolbox with AAGSFW!
IHB is now accepting applications for new state markers! A key part of the application process is finding primary sources to support your topic. One of our favorite though often underused sources when researching historical marker topics is city directories. City directories can inform us where an individual lived or where a business was located in a particular year, can provide information about occupations that individuals had, and can shed light on various institutions that existed in a city, including hospitals, charitable organizations, churches, clubs, libraries, and parks, to name a few! You can search city directories by name through the alphabetical listing, by category in the Miscellaneous Information section, and by street address.
While doing research for the Lt. Col. Joseph H. Ward, M.D. marker in Indianapolis in 2019, we used city directories from 1897 through 1949 to track the location of Ward’s medical practice as it moved from various locations on Indiana Avenue to Boulevard Place. A search of Ward’s name in the alphabetical listing of the 1922 Indianapolis City Directory noted that he was a physician, surgeon, and proprietor of Ward’s Sanitarium, listed the address of the business and noted that it was the same as his home residence, and included the hours the practice was open. The Miscellaneous Information section of the directory also listed Ward’s Sanitarium as one of several Asylums and Hospitals in the city.
The Indiana State Library has a large collection of city directories. You can access information by county here: http://bit.ly/3yJJbA9. Many city directories are also available electronically via Ancestry Library (which can be accessed for free while visiting the State Library) and through the Internet Archive at www.archive.org.
The image below is courtesy of the 1922 Indianapolis City Directory, accessible through archive.org.
1850
Was 1852 the first city directory?
No, the 1852 date in a 1918 newspaper article appears to be a typographic error. The first paragraph of the newspaper article states: The first city guide contained only 2,668 names. The title page of the first known city directory states: Volume 1-1858-1859. The last line of the second paragraph on its Preface Page is: It contains two thousand six hundred and sixty-eight names.
City Directory of Vintage of 1852 Found by Junk Man.
Presents Some Interesting Sidelights on Sort of. Town Fort Wayne Was More Than Half Century Ago.
A copy of Fort Wayne's first city directory, 1852, which was unearthed yesterday by a local junk dealer among a pile of old papers he had bought, presents a very interesting comparison between conditions and enterprises in Indiana's second city now, and sixty years ago; when the first city directory of Fort Wayne was published. The first city guide contained only 2,668 names.
Fort Wayne's first city directory was compiled by C. S. Williams and included not only the names of practically everyone in the city. together with their occupations, but also gave the exact location of their home or boarding place, describing on which side of the street and between which streets everyone's home was. Some of the advertisements in the old directory would appear very ludicrous today. Nearly all grocery ads prominently mentioned that all kinds of country produce would be taken in exchange for merchandise in lieu of money.
Many now obsolete articles of merchandise are advertised in the old city guide, among them being candle molds, spinning-wheels, and home looms, Newspapers and publications prominently advertised themselves as either the official organ of the whig party, democratic party or some other party. In a full page advertisement, with a picture of a very small hand-press, one local publication advertised itself as the largest and most complete printing, establishment in Indiana.
At the time the first city directory was published, Fort Wayne had four newspapers, the Sentinel, Times, Republican and Indiana Stants-Zeltung, none of which were published more than once a week.
Discover the unexpected treasures awaiting you amidst the shelves of The Genealogy Center! Check out this 1883-84 Fort Wayne City Directory, complete with pristine paint samples for an Alabastine Cement Paint advertisement. Which hue catches your eye?
Fort Wayne City and Allen County Directory 1911 - Volume XXXVIII - R.L. Polk & Co. - original is missing pages before page 12, and only goes to Young in the Allen County Directory surname page 238. Part 3 below goes to the Zurcher the last Allen County Directory surname on page 241.
The The Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indianahas all the Fort Wayne city directories to the present, including hundreds of other U. S. cities and towns.
Check out this 1883-84 Fort Wayne City Directory, complete with pristine paint samples for an Alabastine Cement Paint advertisement. Which hue catches your eye?
