Readers of this column are familiar with the use of city directories to trace some of the history of local businesses and residents though the 20th century and even the last 25 years of the 19th century. A recent donation to the Special Collections of the Fenton History Center supplements the large collection of our city directories.

For a number of decades, the Jamestown city directories were issued every two years. The city directories may miss a very short-lived business in those two years or if a move was indicated the time of the move was sometime in those two years. The city directories were for the city of Jamestown and the villages of Celoron, Falconer and Lakewood. Unincorporated areas were not included except for the few years in which heads of households receiving mail on the rural mail routes out of the Jamestown post office are listed by route number.

The recent donation includes almost 100 telephone directories from the local Jamestown Telephone Company and the successors. Our earliest directory is a 1914 list of subscribers of the Home Telephone Corporation. The decades of the 1920s through the 1960s had two telephone directories issued each year, usually in May and November. If a business or a residence had a telephone, they are probably listed in these directories. Since the telephone directories were issued more frequently that the city directories, it may be possible to narrow down the beginning or ending of a business or of a business or resident at a certain address.

Another plus to having the telephone directories for research is that they include areas not included in the city directories. The December 1919 directory includes Jamestown and Falconer, Bemus Point, Frewsburg, Kennedy, Lakewood, and Randolph. Within these designations are other areas, such as Bemus Point that has numbers for residents in Maple Springs, Shore Acres, Bay View, Ellery Center, Phillips Mills, Dewittville, Long Point and some specific streets. Businesses are included and summer residents are listed. This continues for the other listings. Business advertisements appear on every page.

By March 1922, there was a separate “Classified Business Directory.” This was by subject and is what has become what is referred to as the “yellow pages” except for a number of years these pages were actually printed on pink paper. In this collection, the November 1941 issue is the first directory to have the Classified Business Directory printed on yellow paper.

As time went on, more exchanges were created or incorporated into the Jamestown Telephone Corporation and the listings were included in the directories under that place name. In the 1930s there were separate directories printed for Chautauqua Institution each June since much of the institution operated only in the summer.

Information about party lines, long distance rates and other important facts can be found in these directories. We may laugh now as we see the section in the November 1957 issue on “How to use the dial telephone” with such information as “Place the tip of the index finger in the opening over the desired figure and turn the dial around clockwise, until the finger strikes the finger stop, then let the dial go, allowing it to return freely to its normal position.” There are a number of the younger generation that may need that explanation in a label in a museum that exhibits an old rotary dial telephone.