Honestly, I thought the local history museum would be boring until I saw the old city directories

Tbh, I was just killing time at the Springfield Heritage Center last Thursday and started flipping through their physical card catalog. Ngl, I found a 1932 city directory that listed my great-grandfather's old barbershop on Maple Street, which I never knew existed. It wasn't in any online family tree or database. I spent like 2 hours just looking through those old books and found three other businesses from my family. It made me realize you can find stuff in the real world that algorithms will never show you. Has anyone else stumbled on family history in a place like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

morgan_hart3d ago

Totally get that. I was helping my aunt clean out our town's old historical society storage room and found a box of unmarked photos. I mean, we were just about to toss them when I flipped one over and saw my grandma's maiden name and "summer 1951" written in pencil. It was her and her sisters at a lake I didn't even know our family went to. Idk, it just felt more real holding that faded picture than seeing a scanned version online. Those old physical records are a different kind of magic.

karenthompson3d ago

Cool story but it's just old paper. People get weirdly deep about finding a name in a book.