Well Established Neighborhood

1950 City Directory, Cranston, RI clip of Ancestry.com, page 406

Well Established Neighborhood

What a difference from the street listing of the 1948 city directory of "Vacant", compared to this 1950 list of my parent's street. Oddly, the one house that is listed as vacant turns out to be the house in which my future maid of honor for my wedding lives in. Her mother is gone but her father still lives in the house. He is a great grandfather now and still helps his neighbors out when he can. Isn't that great?

This photo is dated 1950 from the family collection of Midge Frazel. Aren't I cute?

The names in this list of people brought back wonderful visual images of the houses and the people who lived there. I can't remember everyone, but from a genealogical perspective, what a wonderful mix of ethnic backgrounds these people were! 

What can't be seen here are the ages of the people living here. I do remember that many houses were sold to young couples, small families and many are people who inherited their parent's house in the city and wanted to move to the suburbs to live. They had cars and could commute to work in this generation. Even in 1950, there was a car in every garage.

Seeing this caused me to marvel that some homes still did not have telephones. But, in later city directories, everyone had one and they eliminated the need to put the telephone symbol next to the name.

This 1950 city directory is considered a 1950 "census substitute". The federal census for 1950 won't be released until April 1, 2022. That year, I will turn 75. Will I be alive to see my name in that census? I hope so. Showing my in-laws their names in the 1930 census was quite fun. I read stories about how it sparked conversations about neighbors when genealogists showed people their own neighborhoods in 1930 and 1940. The gossip was amazing!

 I plan to keep this list for the time when I need to start working in 2021 for the census release.