Bloomington and McLean County City Directories 1855-1920

The Bloomington Public Library in cooperation with Internet Archives make these City/McLean County directories available for free.  These are valuable tools when you are searching for someone and the name may be miss-spelled.  The Directory that opens allows you to select and download the .pdf files with or without full OCR text search.  Thank you BPL and Internet Archive!

Year Coverage Online Directory
1855–1856 Bloomington View Directory
1859–1860 Bloomington and outlying McLean County communities View Directory
1866 Bloomington View Directory
1868–1869 Bloomington View Directory
1870–1871 Bloomington View Directory
1872–1873 Bloomington View Directory
1873 Bloomington and Normal View Directory
1874–1875 Bloomington and Normal View Directory
1875–1876 Bloomington and outlying communities View Directory
1876–1877 Bloomington and outlying communities View Directory
1878–1879 Bloomington and outlying communities View Directory
1880–1881 Bloomington and outlying communities View Directory
1882–1883 Bloomington and outlying communities View Directory
1884 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1885 Bloomington, Normal, Stevensonville and outlying areas View Directory
1886 Bloomington View Directory
1887 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1889 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1891 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1893 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1895 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1897 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1899 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1902 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1904 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1905 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1907 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1909 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1911 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1913 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1915 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1917 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1919 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory
1920 Bloomington and outlying areas View Directory

Available File Formats: Each directory can be viewed online or downloaded in several formats. The PDF is best for browsing or saving a copy of the original scanned pages, while PDF WITH TEXT combines the page images with searchable OCR text. FULL TEXT provides the computer-generated transcription for quickly searching names, addresses, occupations, and other terms, although OCR errors are common in older directories.

HOCR, CHOCR, OCR PAGE INDEX, and OCR SEARCH TEXT are primarily machine-readable files containing OCR text and information about where words appear on the scanned pages; most genealogists will not need these formats.