Albemarle County Historical Society
Location: Second Street NW (attached to the library building between Market and Jefferson Streets), Charlottesville. The Society's library lies across the atrium from the information desk.
Hours: 9-5 M-F, 9-1 Sat.
Photocopy Prices: $0.15/page

City Directories
City Directories were first published for Charlottesville in 1888, though the Historical Society only holds scattered years from then until sometime in the 1910s, when holdings become more thorough. Directories essentially contain two kinds of information. Residential listings (separated by race either in separate sections for black and white or with black residents denoted with asterisks) contain a person's name, and, when available, occupation, work and home addresses, and phone numbers. Not every person is listed in the directories, and the criterion for who is listed is never entirely clear. Only adults appear in the directories, and it seems likely that business owners, individuals regularly employed, and landowners were recorded. Business listings (similarly separated by race) record the names of businesses or, more commonly, the names of the proprietors, the types of business (barber shops or clothiers, e.g.), and their locations. Directories also include lists of local churches, schools, government officials, cemeteries, clubs and secret societies, and state and federal government listings.

The black population from the directories for 1895, 1898, 1904-05, 1909-10, 1916-17, and 1919-20 have been entered into a computer and are currently being converted into a searchable database for use by researchers.

Downtown Charlottesville, Sanborn Map, 1896

Sanborn Maps
Compiled and published by the Sanborn-Perris Map Company, located in New York, these maps are extremely detailed. Street names, railroads, and individual lots are denoted, and it is frequently indicated whether a residence or a business occupies land. Also marked are landmarks and major businesses, schools, cemeteries, churches, and other structures. Hard copies of the maps exist for 1896, 1920, and 1929, though microfilmed copies of the maps span 1886 to 1964. The Sanborn maps can be extremely useful in reconstructing what Charlottesville might have looked like on the ground during the early twentieth century, and allows for the tracing of some change over time in the city's development. While many of the streets and some of the landmarks will be familiar to anyone living in Charlottesville today, changes have been significant in the past century.

The Sanborn company provided indices, and each index accompanies a given year's set of maps.

Vertical Files
The Historical Society holds dozens of drawers of files on particular individuals, families, and subjects from throughout Charlottesville's history. Many files contain newspaper clippings and some contain photographs, genealogies, and other items useful to the researcher. The files are not indexed and are arranged alphabetically. It helps enormously to know very specifically whom you are trying to find information about. Researchers are advised not to use the vertical files until their background research is well advanced.

Obituary Files
Beginning in 1970, the Historical Society began clipping obituaries of local citizens from newspapers or noting when newspapers printed obituaries of individuals. These files contain these clippings and references in alphabetical order.

Albemarle County Court House