Kelly's Directories vs Census

[BenB]

Hi
I am waiting for some replies on the Lookup - Staffordshire pages. So far things are going well!

However I believe that the 1841/1851 census' are difficult to search because of index problems & the legibility of the handwriting.

From the net (now and again) I have heard of Kelly's Directories are they a nominal index or a street one and are they any good?

Who has them?

Regards
BenB

[trish251]

Check this site - it has searchable copies of many such directories. If you select a county you can then look at the first few pages of a directory which describes the contents (cannot cut & paste). I don't find them nearly as useful as the Census - but they are interesting & I have found some ancestors mentioned in them.

http://www.historicaldirectories.org/HistDir/HTML/counties.htm

Trish

[RootsChat]

Hi Ben,

The Directories are like our modern day phone books.

Generally they list the Trades followed by the tradesmens name and address by town. For big cities you sometimes get an alphabetical listing as well (or instead.)

I fully recommend the directories as they provide information in addition to the census because they were issued more frequent and also they give you some help in finding an address to help locate in the census returns.

RootsChat