Online Directories at EveNDon

Thanks to a poster on rootsweb's Cook County, Illinois, mailing list, I have learned that the free and ad-free site EveNDon has images (not transcripts!) of city and county directories well beyond their Pittsburgh home base. (Also some other materials I haven't had time to check out.) They accept donations for this great service and offer fee-based lookups and copying services if you have needs in western Pennsylvania.

In our area they have the following directories on line:

ILLINOIS: statewide, Cass County, Christian County, Coles County, Shelbyville, Springfield, and Chicago (12 directories 1844-1900)

INDIANA: Fort Wayne (4 directories 1860-1917), Indianapolis (9 directories 1858-1896), Jay County

MICHIGAN: Detroit, Saginaw

OHIO: statewide, Cincinnati (29 directories 1819-1875), Cleveland

WISCONSIN: Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Wood County

FYI if your Midwestern roots stretch back to Pittsburgh, they also have 41 Pittsburgh directories 1761-1951.

As a directory aficionado, I would add that if you're in pursuit of everything about a research target, you may need to resort to travel, hired research, or pay sites (such as Footnote.com) that can offer every-year coverage. Working people's residences and relationships and business ties change very often, and you could easily miss an all-important clue by skipping even one year of the relevant time period in a directory. This also applies to non-appearances; people randomly disappear and reappear sometimes.