Further to Joe's informative post about city directories, if your
family lived in a smaller city or town than you can find unexpected
information in city directories. I've seen mentions of people moving,
including to which city they had moved, along with many other useful
bits of info that were an unexpected surprise to find in a city
directory.

Unfortunately, you will not find this level of data in the large
cities, i.e. NYC directories.

However, the city directories remain a great source of info including
occupation, addresses, wife's name (in the latter years of the
directories.)

Another good source of information are digitized newspaper databases.
Smaller town newspapers are a wealth of info, often having articles
about relatives visiting >from another city, marriages, births, etc.
When searching digitized newspaper databases one can search not only
by name but also by address. This has yielded many results in my
research.

This site lists digitized newspaper databases around the world. The
list for the USA is extensive. Many are free, although some are pay
sites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_online_newspaper_archives

Many city directories can be found at Google Books.

Of course, many public libraries have their old city directories on
microfilm. Some even have the original books.

Sherri Bobish
Princeton, NJ

Searching: RATOWSKY, Ariogala (Rogala), Lith.
LEFFENFELD, Daliowa, Posada Jasliska, Pol.
BOJDA, Tarnobrzeg, Pol.
WALTZMAN, Ustrzyki Dolne (Istryker), Pol.
SOLON, SOLAN, SAKOLSKY, Grodek (Bialystock), Pol.
BOBISH, APPEL, WEINER, Odessa