Ontario Directories

Directories of heads of households can help in locating individuals in a certain place, especially when their names do not appear in the censuses. Many city and county directories from the 1840s to the present are available. For example, the Family History Library has directories for:

Toronto

Hamilton

The Family History Library also has microfilm copies of:

The Canada Directory for 1857-1858. Montréal, Quebec: John Lovell, 1857. (FHL film 956,166.) This lists tradesmen in cities in what is now Ontario and Quebec. For an alphabetical index to the Ontario portion, see:

Wilson, Thomas B. and Emily S. Wilson. Directory of the Province of Ontario 1857 with a Gazeteer [sic]. Lambertville, New Jersey, USA: Hunterdon House, 1987. (FHL book 971.3 E4w; not on microfilm.)

Many Ontario directories up to and including 1900 are available on microfiche:

Pre-1900 Canadian Directories. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Institute for Historical Micro-reproductions, 1988. (On 4219 FHL fiche beginning with 6360453. These fiche do not circulate to Family History Centers.)

Some Ontario directories are included in the material indexed in People of Ontario and Central Canadians described in the "Genealogy" section of this outline.

Online Resources

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/can/ont/dir.shtml

http://digitalcollections.torontopubliclibrary.ca/webDC/index.jsp

AND mediatype:texts AND collection:toronto http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=directories%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts%20AND%20collection%3Atoronto

http://www.collectionscanada.ca/canadiandirectories/