The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: And Now For Something Completely Different - A Few Richmond City Directories (1855, 1856, 1881-1884).

Monday, August 17, 2015

And Now For Something Completely Different - A Few Richmond City Directories (1855, 1856, 1881-1884).


Image from the 1883-84 City Directory of Richmond, Virginia.The asterisk denotes "Colored" or African American. Notice the occupations listed. Here's a site that lists directory abbreviations.

Image from the 1883-84 City Directory of Richmond, Virginia. These directories are full of great advertisements.

The street sections of directories can help identify who lived in a particular house. Often times the first appearance of a building in a directory indicates when it was constructed.

City directories are great resources. Here are a few online - see below. We'll have more about city directories in the future. Check these out and report back what interesting things you find in them. And let us know about any others you find online. And thanks to Libby McDaniel for finding the two earliest ones online.

1855:

1856:

1881-1884:

- Ray

1 comment:

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Contributors:

Ray Bonis:

Ray worked at VCU Libraries' James Branch Cabell Library from 1989 until 2021. He is the co-author of Virginia Commonwealth University (2006) and Greetings from Richmond (2009) - an architectural history of the city.

Selden Richardson:

Architectural historian and author of Built By Blacks: African American Architecture and Neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia (2006), The Tri-State Gang in Richmond: Murder and Robbery in the Great Depression. (2012), and Richmond Murder & Mayhem (2023)

On History:

"The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today...The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow."
-- G. M. Trevelyan (1876-1962) from his "Autobiography of an Historian," An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949).

Key Dates in Richmond History
(more to follow)

1737 – William Mayo laid out the original street plan for the town of Richmond on land provided by William Byrd II.

1742 – Chartered as a town

1780 – Virginia’s state capital moved from Williamsburg to Richmond.

1782 – Incorporated as a city.

1788 - Virginia State Capitol building completed.

1860-1865 – Serves as capital of the Confederate States of America.

1910 - Manchester, the city located just south of the James, is consolidated with Richmond.

1949 - Oliver Hill (1907-2007) elected to City Council, first African American since Reconstruction.

1968 - Virginia Commonwealth University created by the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and Richmond Professional Institute.

1977 - Henry Marsh elected as first African American mayor of Richmond.

2009 – Shockoe Examiner founded.