Today, when I think of the white pages, online directories are the first place I look.  With the aid of digitization projects, I can view city directories from the time when my ancestors might have been listed.

I was very fortunate to find an ancestor’s death date listed under his widow’s entry in Sioux City, Iowa city directory.  Not the type of information I had expected to find in a city directory.

City directories are similar to a census record in that they give a snap shot of a family in a particular location at a point in time.  Following a  family through the years (especially years without census records), can provide valuable information on residence, occupations, and possible family members.

Marcia Yannizze Melnyk’s The Genealogist’s Question & Answer Book goes into further details of what you might find in a city directory.