Before Facebook...Locating Californians in City Directories

by Dr. Henry Snyder           

Come see our expanded collection of California Directories

City directories are an invaluable source for genealogists. They fill in gaps between censuses. Even more important, they extend the period for which residence information is available since the federal census is only available through 1940. CGS has had several hundred city directories for California in its collection for some years. We have exceptionally strong runs for San Francisco and Oakland-Alameda-Berkeley. Elsewhere our holdings are quite spotty. Now in an exceptionally generous donation, Dr. Stephen Harris, our former president, has given us his complete set of California directories. When combined with our collection the total number of unduplicated volumes comes to 963! They are shelved altogether, alphabetically by city, in new shelving acquired specifically to house them and installed in the Sherman Room.

Most of the directories were published by the C K Polk Company who began publishing directories over 140 years ago. A 1916 directory lists 58 areas in California—some cities, some counties—for which Polk published directories; we have at least one directory for 52 of the areas. The number varies from 98 directories for San Francisco to many single directories for some localities. Among the best represented are Bakersfield (42), Chico (16), Eureka (21) Fresno (46), Long Beach (17), Los Angeles (40), plus suburban areas, Merced/Madera (15), Modesto (32), Napa (34), Oakland-Alameda-Berkeley (43), Palo Alto (22), Pasadena (16), Richmond (18), Sacramento (61) and Suburban Sacramento (18), San Diego (27) and Suburban San Diego (6), San Francisco (98), San Jose (58), San Mateo (17), Santa Barbara (20), Santa Rosa (23) and Stockton (17).

A number of cities and counties in California and elsewhere in the United States have collections of directories for their own town. So far as we are aware, there is only one other substantial collection of California city directories and that is at the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley, where they are stored off-site and where they must be paged individually, volume by volume. Our collection, then, is a unique resource: Readers can go directly to the shelves and utilize any or all volumes they wish to consult.

But this is not all. Dr. Harris also donated his substantial collection of California telephone directories. These telephone directories fill in gaps in the city directories both place-wise and date-wise. What this means is that for most cities of any size in the state we have telephone directories which can provide essential residence information extending from before the turn of the century until about 1980. This extends the coverage provided by the census another four decades! 

Separate lists of the city directories and of the telephone directories are posted on our webpage. (We are in the process of transferring our online catalog from one utility to OCLC to make the records more accessible. We expect that transition to be completed by the end of May.  At that time we will update the catalog entries to reflect the full richness of our collection.)

We are delighted to be able to offer this unparalleled, unique resource to our members and guests and encourage you to visit now and often to make use of it.

I want to give special thanks to our devoted library team – Arlene and Ted Miles, Shirley Hoye, Gibran Rath, Kristi Wessenberg, Phil Hoehn, and Nancy Cork as well as to additional volunteers, Ted Okazaki and Todd Armstrong, for disassembling, moving and assembling shelves and moving hundreds of unwieldy, heavy volumes two, and in some cases three, times.  

           Copyright © 2015 by California Genealogical Society and Library

New in the City Directory Library

Steve Harris sent this update.

CGS board member and consulting genealogist Steve Harris recently added 1,000 more city directories to the 6,000 city and telephone directories already in his research library. Included are 650 California directories from all over the state.

Update: These city and telephone directories are now incorporated into our main library.  See post from May 2015 for current details on the collection.

Ranging from the 1860s to the 1970s, the directories have numerous applications to genealogy, including tracking individuals and families through time and finding addresses for census look-ups.

The Library of Congress system is used to catalog the collection. A complete listing of Steve's holdings was compiled by CGS volunteer Nancy Servin. The list follows the shelf sequence: by region of country, then statewide directories, countywide directories, and finally directories for specific cities.

Most of the directories are shelved in Steve’s office just down the hall from CGS.

Update: These city and telephone directories are now incorporated into our main library.  See post from May 2015 for current details on the collection.

All of his California directories are located in a second space dubbed "The Annex." Note that the California Genealogical Society also has city directories, with almost-complete runs for San Francisco and Oakland.

Steve's city directory collection is open to members on two days every month: the second Saturday and the third Friday. Members are to check in at the CGS desk first. From there they will be directed to Steve's library. Dr. Stephen Harris can be reached at wizard848@earthlink.net.

Photographs by Kathryn M. Doyle

A Crash Course in City Directories

Location: Latino/Hispanic Room, San Francisco Main Library
Address: 100 Larkin Street, at Grove, San Francisco
Event Date: Saturday, 27 September 2008
Event Time: 10:30 a.m. - 12 p.m.

CGS member Lisa B. Lee is presenting "A Crash Course in City Directories" - a free class supported by Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.

Long before phones and phone books, local publishers were printing city directories for thousands of metropolitan areas in the United States and Canada (and elsewhere). These directories were usually published every year and contained a listing of most of the residents as well as businesses, churches, elected officials, newspapers, etc., in larger cities and towns and often the surrounding areas. This workshop will show how you can use city directories to determine family relationships, land ownership, occupation, spouse's name, race, address, nearby relatives and much more, and why using city directories should be a part of every genealogical project. We'll look at city directories in print, in microform and online.

Steve Harris - Collector of City Directories & Phone Books

Sometimes the best reason to belong to your local genealogical society is the help you can get from fellow members. It can be as simple as the clarity achieved just by speaking a research problem out loud to a willing listener or being able to informally consult with members who have the expertise you lack and are willing to share their resources. But Dr. Stephen Harris took sharing to a whole new level when he made his collection of city directories and telephone books available to CGS members.


Steve, who has a doctorate in psychology from U.C. Berkeley, worked for the Contra Costa County health department and is now semi-retired. He is also a CGS member and professional genealogist whose interest in family history dates back to the Oakland hills fire of October 1991. When Steve lost his home he also lost all of the family documents that he inherited from his parents. He admits he hadn't paid much attention to them before but after they were destroyed he began to wonder if it was possible to replace them and to reconstruct the history of his family. Things just took off from there.


Steve started his collection when he rescued some old phone books that were being discarded by an archive. He has found that most libraries don't like them because they are so fragile and that while city directories have been extensively microfilmed, telephone books seldom are. His collection, which now numbers over 5000 volumes, dating from the mid 1850's to the 1960s, is housed in a space down the hall from CGS in the lower level of 2201 Broadway, Oakland.

Dr. Harris has generously granted CGS members access to his collection two days every month: the second Saturday and the third Friday. Members are to check in at the CGS desk first. From there they will be directed to Steve's library. Dr. Stephen Harris can be reached at wizard848@earthlink.net.

Photographs by Kathryn M. Doyle, 27 Apr 2007.