[or-roots] Finding old RT addresses

[Robyn Greenlund]

Here's some more ideas on finding old addresses I've found helpful....

In 1940 there was more than one type of phone directory, Polks and usually a competitor (like yellow pages and GTE today). Because each book is different from place to place and year to year, these are some of the last books for a library to list in their catalogs. So don't forget to just go to the library (or call someone there) to see if they have them. In Coos County, the oldest Polks is 1904 and the only library that has one is Myrtle Point. No, it's not cataloged yet (so I have it to myself and will be transcribing it here soon).

If you can sit down with the book, you can look for other people on the same route. Then you can look them up in either later books or by their house title records and find a legal address that way (see Les' township, section and range information). A route was just that - the route they went to deliver the mail, so houses on a road tended to be sequential.

You can also as older folks in the area if they remember the routes. In my area they didn't switch from the route to the street name until 1999. What was HC (Highway contract) 85 is what used to be Route 4. And some of the people most liely to remember would be your postmen, your firemen (they had to know to go to the right house) and any delivery people - at furniture stores, appliance stores, etc. You can always ask the librarians too - they often have answered the question for other researchers in your area of interest.

Robyn in Myrtle Point

		
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