Tuesday's Tip ~ Pittsburgh City Directories

Historical City Directories can be useful in family history research and I enjoy browsing them. Different city directories are found at different websites.

For the city of Pittsburgh (and its North Side, formerly Allegheny City), historical City Directories can be found at a website offered by the University of Pittsburgh at Historic Pittsburgh.

I haven't fully explored this site, but you can find a range of dates of historic Pittsburgh City Directories at Historic Pittsburgh City Directories.

I used these directories to narrow down the date of death of one of my 3rd great grandfathers, James Freeland. In the Directory of Pittsburgh and Allegheny cities 1861-1862, James Freeland, plumber, is at the corner of Beaver and Geyer's [Avenue?] in Allegheny:

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In Directory of Pittsburgh and Allegheny cities 1862-1863, James Freeland is at 29 Ohio, with his home at 187 Beaver in Allegheny:

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In Directory of Pittsburgh and Allegheny cities 1863/1864, Nancy Freeland is listed as the widow of James, at the address of 187 Beaver, in Allegheny:

This narrows down James Freeland's date of death to sometime in 1863. There were a couple of James Freelands from Pennsylvania who served in the Civil War, but I have yet to determine if one of them is my 3rd great-grandfather.

As I noted in yesterday's post about his wife, Nancy (Rainey) Freeland, I also used this same method to determine the year of her death as 1903.