Up until yesterday I had a vague idea of what City Directories where used for. I stopped by the local Family History Center trying to narrow down my Gerrity or Toomey lines and one of the nice volunteers suggested I tried the City Directories.

It never occurred to me that I would be able to get such information from them.  I think I might be able to get a better idea of when some of the family moved to the Scranton, PA area based off the directories.  I made copies of every page of GERRRITY, TOOMEY, JACKSON, DECKER in the city directories from 1899-1889.  I think I could have gone further back but this should give me plenty of material  to get a better baseline on when the families arrived in Scranton.

Once I have that figured out I can work towards finding thier immigration records.  One thing I do know is that Anastasia Toomey's husband Peter had passed away in at least 1893.  I figure he might have came with his two sons in around 1890 (possible) have to go back and see if there was a peter living anywhere.

I did also find an Anna Toomey widow to Patrick Toomey (with a Lawrence and James) living in the same house.  I believe that it should have been a Peter Toomey instead.  As for the Gerrity sisters I am still at a lose as there are tons of them in the Scranton area, and I still have no clue when or how they got there.

So just a reminder that City Directories are a great resource to fill in some of the blanks between census records.  Now to match directories to census and see what I have.