Search Engine for Online Historical Directories
This search engine searches text versions of scanned pre-World War II directories, created with OCR (optical character recognition) software. The OCR process is not 100% accurate, so the results are not, either. The result of a search is a list of numbers of images (or pages, for the 1929 Polish business directory) in which your search term appears. Note that the online image numbers are often different from the corresponding printed page numbers. There are four ways to search:

1) Regular, which looks for any matching text (not only words, but also parts of words) and is case insensitive and insensitive to accented characters. In a Regular search, you can use wildcards ? to match any single character and * to match any string of one or zero characters. (The more wildcards you use the slower the search will be.) You can also force word boundaries with | (e.g., "|word|" will match "word" but not "wordy" or "sword").

2) Sensitive, which looks for any matching text (not only words, but also parts of words) and is case sensitive and sensitive to accented characters. In a Sensitive search, you can use wildcards ? and *, and force word boundaries with |.

3) Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex, which matches based on the sound of your search term and is case insensitive and insensitive to accented characters. You can force the first letter of your search term to appear exactly by surrounding it with []. A Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex search lists the words that matched your search term in parentheses after the corresponding image numbers.

4) OCR-Adjusted, which checks for words that have a similar printed shape as your search term, and, therefore, are the most likely to be mistaken for it by the OCR process. OCR-Adjusted searching is case insensitive and insensitive to accented characters.

New users should read the answer to question 1 in the FAQ.
NEW Want to find offline, online directories or share information about them? Visit the new Database of Historical Directories.

Sources: [DLoW] = Digital Library of Wielkopolska, [DLoZG] = Digital Library of Zielona Gora, [SDL] = Silesian Digital Library, [LoC] = Library of Congress, [JRI-P/JG] = JRI-Poland/JewishGen

Search the 1930 Poland and Danzig Business Directory (Trade, Industry, Handicraft, and Agriculture) [DLoW]
or the 1929 Poland and Danzig Business Directory (Trade, Industry, Handicraft, and Agriculture) [JRI-P/JG]
or the 1928 Poland and Danzig Business Directory (Trade, Industry, Handicraft, and Agriculture) [DLoW]
or the 1926/1927 Poland and Danzig Business Directory (Trade, Industry, Handicraft, and Agriculture) [DLoW]

Some of the 1929 directory has been manually converted into a database here. Place indices for the 1926/1927, 1928, and 1930 directories begin on images 18, 113, and 100, respectively. Results are now organized by geographic region.


Regular Sensitive Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex OCR-Adjusted


Search the 1923 Poland and Danzig Commercial Directory [LoC]
and the 1921/1922 Poland Joint Stock Company Directory [DLoW]
and the NEW 1914/1915 Galicia and Bukovina War Refugees Address Directory [SDL]
and the 1912 Galicia Telephone Directory [DLoW]
and the 1901 Galicia Industry Directory [DLoW]

More information about the 1923 Poland and Danzig directory can be found here and here. The WWI refugee directory excludes Lwow and Krakow, which are covered by directories here and here, respectively. A database constructed from the 1891 Galicia Business Directory can be found here.


Regular Sensitive Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex OCR-Adjusted


Search the 1937 Poland Business, School, and Organizational Directory (Selected Cities) [DLoZG]
or the 1925 Western Poland Business Directory (Great Poland, Pomerania, Silesia, Danzig) [DLoW]

An index of the cities included in the 1937 directory can be found here. Note that a small number of entries in the 1937 directory mention cities they are not listed under.


Regular Sensitive Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex OCR-Adjusted


Search the NEW 1939/1940 Silesia Business Directory [SDL]
and the NEW 1927 Lower Silesia Industry, Trade, and Craft Directory [SDL]
and the NEW 1914 Upper Silesia Industry Directory [SDL]


Regular Sensitive Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex OCR-Adjusted


Search the 1925 Romania Business and Organizational Directory, Vol. I (Bucharest) [LoC]
and the 1924/1925 Romania Business and Organizational Directory, Vol. II (rest of Romania) [LoC]

More information about these directories can be found here. Place index for Vol. II begins on image 2169. Results for Vol. II are now organized by geographic region.


Regular Sensitive Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex OCR-Adjusted


Search the 1938/1939 Warsaw Telephone Directory [LoC]

This directory is mainly alphabetized by surname, so it is easy to find people by searching manually, but this search engine permits you to also search by street address, business name, type of business, etc. More information about this directory can be found here.


Regular Sensitive Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex OCR-Adjusted


Search the small 1946 Poznan Business Directory [DLoW]
and the small 1936/1937 Poznan Business Directory [DLoW]
and the 1885 Posen (City) Address and Business Directory [DLoW]

Although the address section of the 1885 directory is alphabetized by name, the business section is not, and there are people listed in the business section who are not listed in the address section.


Regular Sensitive Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex OCR-Adjusted


If this has helped you, please tell me.

Thanks to members of the genealogy community for helpful suggestions, especially Alexander Sharon, Gary Mokotoff, Jean-Pierre Stroweis, Steve Morse, Arne Pearlstein, and Peter Lebensold.

Have you registered your family trees? A way to share genealogical information while respecting privacy, plus a Peer-Reviewed Genealogy Link List.

©2007 Logan Kleinwaks