NYC DIRECTORIES in LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
                         by Sue Budlong
                        Mon Feb 25  1991
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     I have done a fair amount of research in city business
directories for Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Old business directories are
at the back of the Local History and Genealogy (LH&G) Reading Room on
the second floor of the Jefferson Building (original building) at the
Library of Congress.  Modern ones are kept in the stacks located off
this reading room, as are modern telephone directories.  You can
either order them with a call slip, or arrange with the LH&G
librarians for a stack pass if you need to check great numbers of
them.
  
     Back to the old directories: Pre-1860 directories are on
microfiche; 1860 and later are on microfilm (there is some overlap).
Be prepared for occasional misspellings and out-of-sequence names;
also, not everyone appeared in every issue.  Then work backwards to
find out how early he appeared, and forwards as far as you can go.

     Some of the early directories are not alphabetical in the modern
sense; they may be alphabetized by only the first letter or two of
the last name.  Also, some early directories are of the classified
type only; here, you'll benefit from knowing that Francis was a
physician.  Some later directories have a small classified section at
the back of the alphabetical list of names.  Often, professionals
such as physicians paid to have their names printed in boldface type
in the alphabetical section, much as in modern telephone directories.
  
     Often, but not always, if a man died before his wife, you'll
find the wife listed under her name in subsequent years, followed
by a notation such as (widow Francis).  This will allow you to
bracket the husband's year of death.  Beginning about 1900 or so,
wives are often listed along with their living husbands--to use a
hypothetical example, FLEET Francis (Mary), physician [etc.].  But
I've never seen this in the mid-19th century, your apparent period
of interest.
  
     I think the fiche/film collection goes up to about 1913 for
Manhattan (maybe later); for Brooklyn, it ends in 1901.
  
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