Ancestry Magazine

For urban families, city directories can be a gold mine of information on the changing circumstances and household composition of families between federal census years.

Facts about Susan Sloane are on her gravestone in Cathedral Cemetery in Wilmington, Delaware. She was born in 1854, died in 1904, and was the wife of Frank A. Sloane. Cemetery records list two other burials in the lot: her son, Frank Jr., buried September 1908, age 32; and a Francis LaBelle, not known to be a relative, buried October 1890, age 31.

The absence of a spouse buried with Susan suggests a failed marriage that was not a matter of record. Among 19th-century Irish Catholic immigrant families, divorce was unusual for both financial and religious reasons. A marriage breakup was one of those never-discussed family skeletons, especially if there was a subsequent union unapproved by the church.

Evidence for the failure of Susan’s marriage to Frank Sloane is all indirect and comes primarily from city directory listings. In directories dated 1880–81 to 1884, Frank, a painter, appears as a householder; presumably, he headed a family. In 1885, Frank and Susan had separated, and Frank is shown boarding with another family.

Susan isn’t found in the immediately following years; she and her children appear to have returned to the home at 617 East 6th Street where her father, Patrick, and her brother Edward are listed as householders in the 1888 directory. But Patrick died in 1888, and Edward married in 1888, moving nearby to 634 East 5th Street, where he is listed in the 1889 directory.

At the time, only women who were household heads or who worked outside the home were listed in Wilmington directories, and Susan fits the criteria for a directory listing for the first time in 1889. She is listed as householder at 617 East 6th—her father’s former house—selling “varieties.”

Also listed as a householder at the same address is Frank LeBell, a machinist at Diamond State Iron Co.—undoubtedly the person buried in Susan’s cemetery lot, but without a known relationship to her.

In the directory for 1891, Susan appears as Susan T., widow of Frank A. While Frank Sloan’s death hasn’t been confirmed, he doesn’t appear in subsequent directories.

Susan continued to live at the 6th Street address until her death in November 1904. By the time of the 1900 census, Susan’s son and daughter and their spouses and children were living with Susan. They were still at the 617 address in the 1904 directory.

A comprehensive whole-family search of available records, including Catholic baptism and marriage registers for Wilmington (indexed and online through 1900 at ), provides further indirect evidence that Susan’s marriage had problems. But it was the house at 617 East 6th Street, occupied by four generations of the family between 1879 and 1904, and its appearance in successive censuses and city directories, that provides the best information— vital clues ranging from household adjustments to marital breakdowns and early deaths. For urban families, city directories can be a gold mine of information on the changing circumstances and household composition of families between federal census years.

Donn Devine, a regular contributor to Ancestry, has been a genealogist for 30 years, certified by the Board for Certification of Genealogists since 1987, and has published research findings in leading national journals.