[Cz-L] The former Galicia - 1840s, 1862 business directories

This message was posted on the Galicia SIG list:
1840s, 1862 business directories - there are Bukovina
towns in the list:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This message will be of special interest if you are researching any
of the following towns: Altsandecz, Biala, Bochnia, Brody, Brzezan,
Bursztyn, Cisna, Czernowitz, Drohobicz, Gross Poremba, Jaroslaw,
Kamienica, Kenty, Krakau, Lancut, Lemberg, Limanow, Neusandecz,
Podgorze, Podhayce, Przemislany, Przemysl, Radautsch, Rohatyn,
Rzeszow, Sambor, Sereth, Suczawa, Szaflary, Tarnopol, Tarnow,
Wadowice, Wieliczka, Wisnitz, Zakopan.

I recently added the following business directories with (limited)
Galician coverage to my search engine at
http://genealogyindexer.org
from the series of global directories published by Leuchs:

1841-1846 Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, Krakow Business Directory
(Leuchs vol. 12) {d410}

1862 Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Dalmatia
Business Directory (Leuchs vol. 18) {d397}

And with very small Krakow sections:

1865 Bohemia, Moravia, Austrian Silesia, Krakow Business Directory
(Leuchs vol. 19) {d398}

Logan Kleinwaks
kleinwaks_at_alumni.princeton.edu
near Washington, D.C.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1833 Europe Business Directory (Leuchs) {d423}

I made the directories searchable by using Optical Character
Recognition (OCR) to convert the scanned images to text, a process
that is not 100% accurate (but is much faster than manual
transcription). Because of the relatively poor quality of the scans
available for these directories, I also added a complete manual
transcription of the Galicia and Bukovina section of the 1841-1846
directory as an experiment to compare OCR accuracy with manual
transcription accuracy. This manual transcription appears on
http://genealogyindexer.org as:

1841-1846 Galicia and Bukovina Business Directory (part of Leuchs
vol. 12) {d382}

All of the above are included if you search at
http://genealogyindexer.org with the default options. You can limit
a search to one or more of the directories by appending the codes
in {} after your search, like this: friedmann {d410, d397, d382}. If
you change the "Any Place" dropdown to "Galicia," only the manual
transcription d382 will be searched, since the others have
substantial non-Galician coverage (and are categorized under
"Multinational"). It is not currently possible to search only the
Galician sections of the other directories, but search results will
indicate the sections where matches occur (e.g., results from the
1862 directory might include "Section: Galicia").

For the OCR'd directories, the accuracy for town names is especially
low. If you are interested in all the entries from a particular town in
the 1862 directory d397, I suggest refering to the place index
("Orts-Register") beginning at http://bit.ly/IdcZCn, rather than (or in
addition to) searching for the town's name. If you are interested in
all the entries from a particular town in the 1841-1846 directory,
you can search the manual transcription by the town name, like this:
rohatyn {d382}. Note, however, that the manual transcription only
includes towns for which individual business owners are named --
precisely the list of towns at the beginning of this message (as
spelled in the directory). Many other towns appear in the directory,
but only include general information about the types of businesses
present, without naming individual business owners (if you are
interested even in that, refer to the place index beginning at
http://bit.ly/JzJX0R).

All search results link to scans of the matching directory pages. The
Leuchs directory scans are hosted by the Bavarian State Library,
which has impressive online holdings that I expect will yield many
more genealogically useful sources upon further exploration.

These directories are certainly not comprehensive (the 1841-1846
directory only contains about 600 individual names in Galicia and
Bukovina), so not finding someone listed in a town's section
definitely does not mean (s)he did not have a business there at the
time. The Galicia sections of the Leuchs directories are much less
comprehensive than, say, the Bavaria or Styria sections,
unfortunately. For some Galician towns, a very high proportion of
the entries are likely Jewish, judging from their names only, and,
sometimes, Jewish merchants are identified as such, but, in general,
I do not know how well represented Jewish merchants are.

Should you wish to examine these directories without searching,
you can find links to their scans and their original German titles at
http://genealogyindexer.org/directories.

I frequently add directories and other sources to the search engine,
but I usually do not announce additions here. To receive
announcements, follow @gindexer on Twitter.

If you have any research successes with these directories, please let
me know!

Best regards,

Logan Kleinwaks
kleinwaks_at_alumni.princeton.edu
near Washington, D.C.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Received on 2012-04-22 06:24:34