Can a local library help??

[liner33]

I have traced most of my ancestors but want to flesh out the bones a little.

A couple of my ancestors lived in Bristol , one was a lodging house keeper and his son was a wine trader and employed quite a few people.

Apart from trying to find the houses where they lived what other information could i get in the locality???

Would the central library have anything like business directories of the time 1890-1910

Any other suggestions

[stanmapstone]

Have you tried the Digital Library of Historical Directories
http://www.historicaldirectories.org/

Stan

[toni*]

do you have a local museum ?

[casalguidi]

Here is an idea of the type of thing you can see at Bristol reference library:

http://www.familia.org.uk/services/england/bristol.html

Casalguidi

[Little Nell]

If you cannot get to  Bristol in the near future then a couple of links may help you.  On a wet day these could help you pass a couple of hours.

http://weldgen.tripod.com/id41.html    (Bristol Businesses)

http://www.churchcrawler.co.uk/index.html  (Bristol Churches)

http://www.bristolslostpubs.com/  (Bristol's lost pubs)

http://www.handzon.com/itechapp/athlon850/  (Bristol History, used to be bristolhistory.com by the looks of things)

LOTS of history for you - and pictures.

Nell

[behindthefrogs]

My experience is that the local reference library is often a goldmine of information.  Don't restrict yourself to the records listed in the above replies but look at the local history section as well. 

I have found stories which involved my ancestors back to the middle of the 19th century buried in various publications.  Unfortunately only about half of them have indexes and so it can be hard work digging out the information. These stories were often about people who from the census would seem to have been just an Ag Lab.  Small towns and large villages usually have better relevant sources of this type than the large towns and cities  Initially you will probably find secondary sources but the better ones will reference and thus lead you to their primary resources.

One of my interesting finds was an ancestor who was at Cambridge with Samuel Pepys and from the index to his diaries I found a number of bawdy stories which would be unrepeatable here.

David

[liner33]

Many thanks for the replies , i'm thinking of having a day out in Bristol and visiting the central library my ancestors were based in Clifton which is close to the centre of Bristol