Post Office and Street Directories
This article originally appeared in "Directories" by Gordon L. Remington, FASG, FUGA in The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy
Post office and street directories were originally published by the government to help deliver the mail correctly before the advent of zip codes. Post office directories list all active post offices in the year of publication. For instance, The Street Directory of the Principal Cities of the United States . . . to April 1908 contains the names of streets and the cities with streets by those names. This was necessary in cases where the sender listed only a street address, with no city and no return address. The directory was published mainly for the use of the Division of Dead Letters and should not be confused with the street directories discussed with city directories.
How to Use Post Office and Street Directories
You can use both of these types of directories with old family letters. If you have a letter that bears only the name of a town and state and the town cannot be found in any modern gazetteer, it may no longer exist, or the name may have been changed. A post office directory from the right period gives you the location. If the letter bears only an address on Religious Street and the date of 13 January 1908, the original envelope having been lost, the street directory can help. A 1908 directory shows:
- Reliance Place
- Flushing, N.Y.
- (Elmhurst)
- Relic Alley
- Pittsburg, Pa.
- Relief
- Oil City, Pa., 1-20
- Relief Alley
- Allegheny, Pa.
- Pittsburg, Pa.
- Relief Ave.
- Poplar Bluff, Mo., 200-600
- Religious
- New Orleans, La., 1400-1999
- Rellis
- Saginaw, Mich., 200
- Relyea Place
- New Rochelle, N.Y., 1-20
- Rembert
- Memphis, Tenn., N.
- 61-662 S.<ref>Street Directory of the Principal Cities of the United States Embracing Letter-Carrier Offices Established to April 30, 1908 (Washington, D.C.: Postmaster General, 1908), 637.</ref>
Thus, in 1908, Religious Street existed only in New Orleans. If, however, the name is Relief, you would have more cities to consider. This method can be used with any stray street address, including photographers' addresses on the backs of old photographs.
References
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