Genealogy Chat

If you live near London there is a very good set of Directories at the Guildhall Library for the whole country. Otherwise a trip to Surrey and nearest big Library is your next best bet. Not all the Directories are on the historicaldirectories website. Like a lot of records, most are at the source rather than the internet! Janet

William Henry Gooding lived at Whitehorse cottages in 1881 census

Hi Steve as there are only a handfull for Surrey on the historical directories site. Chances are they wont be in any of those ones as they seem to be more Trade directories i even keyed in Arundel St for the 1891 one they have and Whitehorse Cottage for one of the others nothing not even a street list. Sorry Colette xxxxxxxxxxxx ps have you tried any Devon ones for Williams dad.

Even though there are a lot of directories on the site it only scratches the surface of the actual number of them. Perhaps they could be found in a library local to their area? I have bricklayers and shoemakers in my tree and they only sometimes appear on that site. Whereas I have found them locally in an archive/library. Another problem is that it uses 'word recognition' from the old printing and it can sometimes be a bit hit and miss. Also it takes sooooo looonnnggggg to look at the pages! Anne

Steve - there don't seem to be very many directories for Surrey on there at all. The 1878 one only has a Mrs. Gooding (dairy) listed for Croydon. It might be worth trying the London suburbs ones and see if they include Croydon. I find the best way to search is use the keyword search, select county and date and see what directories come up before entering any keywords, that way you can see if there are any directories worth looking at! Then choose the directory, and look at the 'Fact File', then browse the directory and see if you can find the section for the place you are looking for, i.e. Croydon (the towns will be in alphabetical order) and when you get there look through for the residents section. It is often quicker to do it that way than to search for keywords and go to each hit if there are a lot of hits! Kate.

Amazing they aren't on any directories. What are the chances? They did exist! So why aren't they in directories, is there some sort of reason for not appearing... I can't figure it out

Hopefully, I hate the site personally. My family are in Croydon and I'm sure if it showed me the pages for residents/professionals in Croydon I'd find them Steve

I have to say Steve, I am the same when I use that site, its a real hit and miss whether I actually find what I am looking for. I hope they make it more user friendly at some time.

Ok Details I have are, Surrey area, Croydon. William Henry Gooding Samuel Gooding All this family were stone masons to my knowledge. Living in Surrey from 1876 onwards Steve

Why don't you give us some details of what you are searching for then perhaps we can give you some tips. Kate.

Searching the historicaldirectories site, I can't seem to find anyone I want, even if I know where they were in what time frame. What am I doing wrong. Steve