Ottawa & Kingston City Directory - 1875 (A McAlpine company directory.)

$30.00

Cat No.:   CA0190:

Far more than just the cities of Ottawa and Kingston, this directory covers most of the (in 1875) significant communities in Ontario lying North and East of Kingston, i.e.,:

Almonte, Arnprior, Barriefield, Brockville, Bryson, Carleton Place, Cornwall, Edwardsburg (now Cardinal?), Gananoque, Garden Island (Nr. Wolf Isl.), Iroquois, Kemptville, Kingston, Landsdowne (now Lansdowne), Lyn, Mallorytown, Merrickville, Morrisburg, New Edinburgh (now part of Ottawa), Ottawa, Pakenham, Pembroke, Perth, Portsmouth (now part of Kingston), Prescott, Renfrew, Richmond, Rochesterville (was part of Nepean Township), Sand Point, Smith's Falls, Westport, & Wolf Island, as well as the Quebec communities lying along the North shore of the Ottawa river i.e.,:

Aylmer, Buckingham, Gatineau Point, Hull, Peche, Portage du Fort, & Shawville.

It is both a directory of citizens and a business directory. The directory of citizens includes - according to the directory itself - The name of every male from 21 years up ... from the daily laborer up to the wholesale merchant, .... although there are also the names on many females, presumably where they are the head of a household. As well as the location of the domicile, the trade or profession is also given for each person. For the larger communities of Ottawa and Kingston it also provides a classified business directory and a street directory from which the layout of the city's streets can be deduced and the location of the citizens and their businesses placed. A fantastic resource for finding ancestors.

The McAlpine company published directories in the Maritime Provinces, particularly in Halifax and St. John, for many years before publishing this, and a few others in Upper Canada. Since this appears to be the only issue made of the Ottawa & Kingston edition we can only conclude that it was not well received at the time. This is a pity because we have never seen another period directory doing such wonderful service to all the smaller communities in addition to the major ones.

In the Preface there is a (now) rather amusing story of the difficulties encountered by the publisher's agents in gathering data for the directory in Ottawa Lower Town where they were taken for Government agents taking a survey for able bodied men suitable for enrollment into military service. The book also contains historical sketches of Ottawa and Kingston and an Appendix providing a wide range of information such as the names of elected and government officials, Post Office & Customs information as well as Local Government and other information for Ottawa and Kingston.

There are over 700 pages in this directory including many great period advertisements. We have provided a Sampler of this directory on our Downloads page so you can browse a few of the pages before you buy.

This directory has been scanned to make it text searchable using the Search or Find functions of the common PDF interpreter applications such as Adobe Reader (compatible with V4 or above, V6 or higher recommended.) We have provided a free downloadable sampler of the book on our Downloads web page.

We are indebted to the Historical Society of Ottawa for kindly loaning us this early directory so we could reproduce it for you on CD. Please join with us to thank them for their public spirited generosity in allowing us to make this rare and valuable book more accessible. Another successful Archive CD Books Canada cooperative project. Also thanks to the Bytown museum - who house and maintain the Society's book collection - for their cooperation.

You can also reach the Sampler by clicking on the following link Sampler

You can return to this page by closing the Sampler Page when you are ready to purchase.

No. of CDs is:  1 ;   Format is:  PDF ;   Searchable?:  YES;

FastFind:  No;  ISBN No.:   1-897338-62-7;