Kazoo Directories At Ancestry

In case you haven't noticed, Ancestry.com has Kalamazoo area directories.  They've actually had them for a while, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the page listing Kalamazoo records.  Why they choose to hide them, however, is a mystery to me.

In the past, the directories went up through the 1930s.  I recently noticed that these city directories now include years as recent as 1960.  As far as I can tell, the collection available at Ancestry is complete or nearly complete for the years represented.  There are gaps, but directories were not published every year.  They are scarce in the early years and spotty during the Depression and WWII.


Note:  I haven't posted in a while because I've had to give myself a crash course on homeschooling.  Time for me to learn or re-learn some things.

Clues in City Directories

I'm sure all genealogists have used city directories to trace families from year to year. While the federal census comes around but once a decade, directories were often published every year or two, depending on the city and time period. The information provided in the directory is therefore potentially very valuable. For those ancestors who only briefly lived somewhere in between census years, the city directory may be your only opportunity to tie them to a particular location. I have also used them to help confirm family relationships and even to confirm a suspected death.

One of my people is census-shy, at least after marrying into my family. The only place I have found him after marriage is in the St. Louis city directory. While I found a man of the appropriate age in the 1880 census I couldn't be sure it was my John H. Hubler. By following John backward through city directories I tied him to the suspected father from the 1880 census when I found them living at the same address just before John appeared on his own. While that was a happy moment I would rather have found John in the 1900 census (my only chance to find the family together before John's wife died in 1903).

The city directory has been helpful in tracing the Hubler family in another instance. I had managed to find a birth record for one of John and Emma's children, Mildred (Emma's obituary in the Kalamazoo Gazette stated there were three children). Mildred Hubler turned up in the St. Louis city directory in 1913 (at about age 17), but not alone. An Alice and Donald Hubler were in the same household and they stayed together through 1916. I suspect they may be Mildred's siblings, but as they seem to be just as census-shy as their father, I may never know for certain.

I have also used city directories to confirm a death. I had a possible death record for a Charles McGinnis, but I wasn't sure he was my Bridget's husband, Charles. By looking in city directories, I was able to find Charles up until the year of suspected death at which point Bridget appeared, listed as the widow of Charles. I later confirmed this with information from Charles' Civil War pension application file.

One final example involves the 1883 Kalamazoo census. I found a William Flynn (a blacksmith) living with my relative Lawrence Flynn. I had always wondered who he was as I never found him in any other Kalamazoo records. I later determined through newspapers, death and census records that William and Lawrence were cousins.

I hope you have similar luck in tracking down some of your elusive ancestors using clues from city directories.

To begin looking for your family in Kalamazoo city directories start at www.kalamazoogenealogy.org.

For more ideas on what else you can find about your ancestors (and community in general in city directories) read my post More Than Just Names.  I also list repositories for Kalamazoo city directories and some from neighboring counties.

One-Stop Shopping for Kalamazoo Records

Happy did not begin to describe my feelings when I discovered the page set up by Joe Ferrara at Kalamazoo Genealogy. Joe has spent countless hours working on this page which contains copies from the Kalamazoo County vital records books, among other things. Civil registration began in Michigan in 1867 for births, marriages and deaths, though for the first decade or so after that, I have found birth and death records to be a bit spotty. Some marriage records were recorded as early as 1831. The records available on this site are as follows:

Birth Index: 1867-1909 (birth records are closed to the public for 100 years to protect privacy)

Birth Records: 1867-1903

Marriage Index: 1831-1975

Marriage Records: 1831-1941

Death Index: 1867-1975

Death Records: 1867-1933

Before you jump right into the actual records you will first need to look up the person in the index so that you can make note of the book and page number. Armed with this information you can then go to the appropriate book and page to view the record. Right-click to save to your computer. In cases in which you need to scroll down to view the second page of the record you will need to right-click again in order to save the second page.

Another place you should be sure to check out is at the bottom of the Kalamazoo county vital records page. Where it says “Other Records” you can click on a link to the Kalamazoo Public Library Vital Records. Joe describes it as follows: (1800s-1940s) burial, biographic, & obit citations. Church records: baptisms, marriages, adoptions, & membership. Here, Joe has copied the card file from the library. The church records are only from a few of the older congregations in town, but if your family attended you may find a wealth of information. Search by surname and click on the highlighted section to bring up a photo of the card. For a key to the abbreviations on the card click on the drop down menus at the top of the page. Be sure to check alternate spellings of the name.

But wait, there's more. Joe has also added cemetery records (various throughout Kalamazoo county), some family trees, select city and county directories (1860-1935, usually every 5 years), basic maps (1861, 1873, 1890, 1913), school yearbook records, WWI veteran information (from books at the library), transcribed obituaries from the Schoolcraft Express (1917-1972) and some probate records (1831-1857). These may all be searched individually or you can use the search function to look across all non-vital records by surname.

Be sure to scroll down to see Joe's links to other helpful Kalamazoo sites as well as some from southwest Michigan and state-wide. As of the writing of this blog there are 240,000 files on the site. Joe deserves a great, big thank you from all of us who have benefited from his hours of work on the site. As I live out-of-state, I can easily say that I would not have made nearly so much progress on my own family history if not for the information I have found here.