TRADES DIRECTORIES
Some well known series of Gentlemen and Trades Directories
are Kelly's (1845), Pigots (1814), and Whites (1826 Hull).
A description of their contents as given by Pigots, says, "National Commercial
Directory comprising a directory and classification of the Merchants, Bankers,
Professional Gentlemen, Manufacturers and Traders, in all the Cities, Towns,
Sea-Ports and principal villages in the Counties named."
Historical Trades Directories Link
The largest collection of online searchable Trades Directories
for various Counties on one Website.
http://www.historicaldirectories.org/
The information contained therein is listed firstly under
the City or Town or Village, then under the type of Trade, then the tradesmen
are listed alphabetically along with the number and name of the street
in which they carried out their trade. This makes research a little difficult,
if you know that your ancestor was say, a shoemaker who originated from
Norfolk, but you have no idea where in Norfolk. It will be a matter
of searching through the hundreds of towns listed to check each list of
shoemakers.
Volumes of the Trades Directories are normally found in
the County Record Offices to which they refer and facsimile printed editions
of many of the PIGOT range have been produced by Michael Winton of Castle
Rising, Kings Lynn, Norfolk.
To facilitate easier research methods of these trades
volumes, some educational organisations (see link above) have made them
available online in searchable Acrobat Reader format. Others have painstakingly
produced alphabetical lists of whole counties. Others will kindly do a
lookup for a name and occupation supplied.
Online University Alumni's
If your ancestor belonged to one of the professions that
required University education, then most "ancient" universities have published
details of their former students back to the sixteenth century. The details
you find in these records are the names of the father, his rank and occupations,
where the student lived, his college and his later career if known. Sometimes
one can be very lucky in one's searches of these records and find whole
generations of families. For Alumni which are not yet freely searchable
online, contact the University's Librarian for advice, otherwise use the University Search Engine for the word ALUMNI.
University of Cambridge-England
University of Oxford-England
University of Dublin-
Ireland
University
of St Andrew -Scotland
University of Aberdeen
-Scotland
University of Edinburgh-Scotland
University of Glasgow
-Scotland
Online Apprenticeship Records
Boys, some as young as 12 years old, were introduced
into a profession by being sent on apprenticeships with a Master of that
Trade or Profession.
London
Apprenticeship Abstracts 1568-1850, 170,000 names
Also see THE BEST OF and follow all links