Ancestor Relocation Information in US-City Directories

In my previous blog post, I shared that death dates can be found in US-City Directories. I also said that I would write a blog post about another interesting and helpful item that can be found in US-City Directories. Today I'm going to tell you about that helpful item.

While indexing the record set, US-City Directories, 1902-1935 [Part I], at FamilySearch.org, I noticed that instead of a street address, the words "removed to" followed by a specific place were listed next to some people's names. "Removed to" next to a person's name means that they moved away from that particular city. In other words, if a person moved from Kalamazoo, Michigan that person may not have been excluded from the Kalamazoo City Directory. Instead, the city directory may include that person's name and the place to where that person moved. How cool is that?! So, if you've been wondering why you can't find an ancestor in the place you think they should be, a US-City Directory may be able help you find them.

Here is an example from the 1891 Seattle, Washington, US-City Directory.¹ James S. Adams is listed with an occupation as a printer who "removed to S F, Cal." (By the way, this is not my ancestor.)

I did a search for James S. Adams in San Francisco, California and found a James S. Adams in the 1891 City Directory for San Francisco California, living at 743 Pine.² His occupation was listed as a compositor. Wikipedia has several definitions of Compositor, one of which is the following: "Compositor may refer to: Compositor (typesetting), a person or machine which arranged movable type for printing."³

This James S. Adams, compositor, living in San Francisco, at 743 Pine in 1891 very well could be the same James S. Adams, printer, in the 1891 Seattle, Washington, City Directory, who removed to San Francisco, California.

US-City Directories are very valuable resources for family history research. Removals (where someone "removed to") are just one of many items listed in the Potential Content section of the FamilySearch Research Wiki article, United States Directories.

Have you been able to trace your ancestor using US-City Directories?

Thanks for stopping by!

Jana

© 2024 Copyright by Jana Iverson Last, All Rights Reserved

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1 U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995, image 70 of 597, James S. Adams; image, “Seattle, Washington, City Directory, 1891.”, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 11 October 2024).^↩
2 U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995, image 101 of 1668, James S. Adams; image, “San Francisco, California, City Directory, 1891.”, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 11 October 2024).^↩
3 Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), “Typesetting,” rev. 20:27, 25 August 2024.^↩

Death Dates in US-City Directories

Last week I was doing some indexing at FamilySearch.org. One of the record sets I indexed was US-City Directories, 1902-1935 [Part I]. While indexing this record set, I noticed that some of the entries included the age of the person and a death date. Here is a screenshot of one of them.

Wow! I don't remember seeing this kind of vital event information in US-City Directories before during my personal family history research.

I looked up United States Directories in the FamilySearch Research Wiki and saw that death dates are included in the long list of potential content found in directories.¹ How awesome is that?!

These death dates should be taken as clues that can help us find the actual death record for an ancestor. While preparing this post, I did more research in US-City Directories and found another person with a death date and age next to their name.² (This is not one of my ancestors.)

Highlighted in this directory is a Bernard M. Desenberg (aged 74) who died on September 14, 1901. I did a search for his death certificate and found it in Ancestry.com. His death certificate listed his death date as September 27, 1901.³ So, yes, the death date listed in the US-City Directory is a helpful clue, but as you can see, his death day was incorrectly listed as 14 in the directory instead of 27.

I was curious about the source of the death information found in US-City Directories. And I found my answer at the Library of Congress website. I learned from their US-City Directories Research Guide that "City directories are compiled through door-to-door surveys...."⁴ Interesting! So, it's possible that whoever was providing information to the survey-taker that day gave the wrong day of death for Bernard M. Desenberg. But, they were correct about the month and year of Mr. Desenberg's death.

US-City Directories are fantastic resources. I found another interesting and helpful item that can be found in US-City Directories. I'll share more about that in an upcoming post.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jana

© 2024 Copyright by Jana Iverson Last, All Rights Reserved

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1 FamilySearch Wiki (www.familysearch.org/wiki), “United States Directories,” rev. 03:29, 21 March 2024.^↩
2 U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995, image 121 of 355, Bernard M. Desenberg; image, “Kalamazoo, Michigan, City Directory, 1902.”, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 4 September 2024). ^↩
3 U.S. City Directories, Library of Congress, (www.guides.loc.gov/united-states-city-telephone-directories/city-directories, accessed 4 September 2024).^↩
4 "Michigan, U.S., Death Records, 1867-1952," database with images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 4 September 2024); certificate image, Bernard M. Desenberg, 27 September 1901, no. 400; citing Michigan Department of Community Health, Division for Vital Records and Health Statistics; Lansing, Michigan.^↩

Preserving Memories ~ Disneyland in the Summer of 1955

As I've mentioned previously, I've worked on a large family history project. I've scanned photos, slides, and negatives of various sizes that I inherited from my parents and my maternal grandparents. I have also scanned photos and negatives from my own collection. I'm not finished with this scanning project yet, but I'm taking a break at the moment.

Today I want to share some digitized images that were scanned from medium format negatives that belonged to my maternal grandparents, Debs and Willis (Quillin) Webster. They are photos of a trip they took to Disneyland in the summer of 1955. I have some printed photos from this trip that have an August 1955 date stamped on them. Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955.

My mom's mother, Sarah Vasques Madeira, died when my mom was almost four years old. Her father, Debs Webster, married Willis Quillin a couple years later in 1944. Willis was the only maternal grandmother I knew. And she was a wonderful grandma to my brothers and me. Although technically she was our step-grandma, she was lovingly referred to as grandma by us. So, that's how I will refer to her in this post.

My mom, her parents, her brothers, and grandmother immigrated to the United States from Brazil in the summer of 1952. They settled in the Los Angeles area, specifically Pomona. I think it's so awesome that my mom and her family went to Disneyland three years after their immigration to the USA. And it's awesome that they went to Disneyland shortly after it opened. I wish I knew if they were there on the day it opened or not. But, even if they didn't go on opening day, they were there soon after Disneyland opened, which is very cool. My mom turned seventeen years old on July 24, 1955. I wonder if they went to Disneyland for her birthday. I'm so glad they took photos of their time there.

It's also neat to see what Disneyland looked like in the summer of 1955.

Here they are on Main Street standing in front of the Wurlitzer Music Hall. My mom is the third from the right. She's standing next to her younger brother, Edwin (second from the right). Her other brother is seventh from the right. He's standing in front of my grandma (in the plaid skirt). My mom's grandmother, Helena Rohwedder Quillin, is the sweet lady holding her purse (sixth from the right). Apparently, the Wurlitzer Music Hall closed sometime in the late 1960s. Something else is there now.

Here's another photo in front of the Wurlitzer Music Hall. My grandma (in the plaid skirt) and her mom (my great-grandmother) are standing next to the man in the baseball cap. 

And here's another photo of Main Street. My mom and some of her family were walking on the sidewalk close to the street. My mom is the one with her left arm up and a bow in her hair. Her two brothers are on her left and my grandma is on her right. It's pretty cool to see Main Street back then.

Here's my mom and her family walking along at Tomorrowland. My mom is second from the right in this photo. My grandma is on her right.

It's difficult to see my mom and her family in this photo but it's a pretty cool photo because it shows Autopia on the left. See that Richfield sign above all the people on the left? That was Autopia. I had to look up what Richfield was and learned that it sponsored Autopia back then. My mom and her family are facing away from the camera in this photo and are close to the TWA Moonliner. My mom had a bow in her hair.

Speaking of Autopia, here is a photo of my grandma in an Autopia car. She's in the light car on the left. Interestingly, there wasn't a center guide rail on the track like there is now. Wow!

Well, that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed going down memory lane with me as we visited Disneyland in the summer of 1955 with my mom and her family.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jana

© 2024 Copyright by Jana Iverson Last, All Rights Reserved

Have You Tried The MyHeritage In Color™ Tool?

In 2020, MyHeritage announced their new MyHeritage In Color tool. In just a matter of seconds it can colorize black and white photos. I used this tool to colorize a black and white photo of my mom. She was eleven years old when this photo was taken.

Here is the black and white photo of my mom. By the way, I absolutely love this photo.

And here is the colorized photo.

MyHeritage's tool also includes an Enhance and a Repair feature. You can see those features in the photo at the top of this post. I decided to try the Repair feature on the colorized photo of my mom. Here it is.

I then decided to add the Enhance feature to my mom's photo and here is the result.

For some reason, the color of my mom's blouse became discolored in several areas. However, the Enhance feature did improve the photo by eliminating the pixelation in the original photo. The original photo is a rather small jpg file at 146 KB.

What do you think? Which version of these colorized photos do you prefer? Have you used the MyHeritage In Color tool? How did it work on your photos?

I really do like this tool and appreciate being able to colorize black and white photos. It's really fun to see this adorable photo of my mom in color. Thank you MyHeritage!

You can read more about this new tool at Colorize your black and white photos automatically with MyHeritage In Color™

Thanks for stopping by!

Jana

© 2024 Copyright by Jana Iverson Last, All Rights Reserved

My 12th Blogiversary

Oops! I missed my April 5th blogiversary again!

How has it already been twelve years since I began this blog on April 5, 2012? So much has happened since then.

Here are some things that have happened since I started this blog twelve years ago:

• My husband and celebrated the marriages of our five children.
• My husband and I now have eleven grandchildren and are expecting our twelfth grandchild this summer.
• In 2016, my husband and I bought a new-construction home, put our old home on the market, sold it, found a rental home to live in while our new home was being built, moved to our rental home, and then moved to our new home in Spring 2017.
• My sweet, beautiful mom, Elizabeth Webster Iverson, passed away in October 2018.
• In April 2019 I went back to college online and in April 2022 I graduated from BYU-Idaho with two degrees: an Associate of Applied Science in Family History Research and a Bachelor of Science in Professional Studies.
• I served as an Official Conference Blogger at the 2015 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy.
• I served as a RootsTech Ambassador and Influencer.
• I spoke at the Fresno County Genealogical Society's June 2016 General Meeting. My presentation was titled "Family History Blogs and Social Media."
• My genealogy blog was mentioned and quoted in a FamilySearch Blog article on 9 January 2015.
• I have been able to "meet" previously unknown cousins because of this blog and because I've put my family tree online.
• I have learned more about my ancestors and have shared information about them here on my blog.
• I have met wonderful fellow genealogy bloggers from around the world virtually and in person.
• Recently, I have started working on a large family history scanning project that includes photos, slides, and negatives I've inherited from my parents and my maternal grandparents, as well as photos and negatives from my own collection.

THANK YOU

Thank you to my wonderful readers for taking the time to read my posts and for leaving comments over the years. I appreciate your support very much!

BLOGGING YEAR IN REVIEW

Here are my posts from the last year (since my last blogiversary).

A Favorite RootsTech 2023 Class Session - May 19, 2023

Going Down Memory Lane ~ My Storyworth Book - September 13, 2023

My Adorable Grandparents - March 11, 2024

Lillian Waterman's Obituary ~ I Have Questions - March 19, 2024

Again, thank you for taking the time to read my posts!

Thanks for stopping by!

Jana

© 2024 Copyright by Jana Iverson Last, All Rights Reserved