Herefordshire and Shropshire Directories, 1917

This database contains Kelly's 1917 directory of Herefordshire and Shropshire, England. It provides a general description of both counties, including a listing of their Hundreds, Poor Law Unions, and Magistrates. The directory includes a topographical description of the places located within these counties as well as an alphabetical listing of their private residents and those employed in commerce and trade. The Parliamentary Division of the County, Hundred, Union, County Court District, Diocese, Archdeaconry, and Rural Deanery are listed under each parish.

City directories are primarily useful for locating people in a particular place and time. They can tell you generally where an ancestor lived and give an exact location for census years. They are also useful for linkage with sources other than censuses.

Some city directories list adult children who lived with their parents but were working or going to school. Look for persons of the same surname residing at the same address. If analyzed and interpreted properly, these annual directories can tell you (by implication) which children belong to which household, when they married and started families of their own, and when they established themselves in business. In cases where specific occupation is given, you can search records pertinent to that occupation.

Once an ancestor has been found in a city directory, there are several ways the information can be used to gain access to, or link with, such sources as censuses, death and probate records, church records, naturalization records, and land records.

Taken from Chapter 11: Research in Directories, The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy by Gordon Lewis Remington; edited by Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking (Salt Lake City, UT: Ancestry Incorporated, 1997).