CORRECTION NOTES

Name and employor corrections

Alphabetization of names and businesses is a useful analysis tool in the spreadsheet form. Consistent spelling is a prerequisite to this. For businesses and churches, this usually a simple matter of consistent use of punctuation and abbreviation. For people it is more difficult. The unemended text often has a first name which may be followed by an initial. The problem is deciding if entries from several years refer to the same person or different people with the same last name. I looked for entries from adjacent years with commonality in other fields (trade, employer, residence). With agreement in two other fields, I concluded that the various entries referred to the same person. With agreement in only one other field, I sometimes made the emendation. Part way through the emendations, I started recording the more controversial corrections. Given first names of "Wm" and "Wm A" the correction either added or deleted the initial depending on which form was more common in the original directories. Emendations also varied the order of initials (S E Brown vs E S Brown) and adjusted name abbreviations.

After 1898, a few Might directory entries appear in a mixture of boldface, allcaps and larger font. Octavious Hicks, Charles Hughes and Charles Nurse were the usual purchasers of this advertising service. I have deleted all traces of these devices.

Trade, employer and street names have been normalised. Might canvassers sometimes used several abbreviations for a popular trade such as "brick maker". The intent of normalisation is to standardize spelling (as if editing Middle English poetry). For company names, this can be sensitive issue as names sometimes changed over the four decades listed here. My intent was to have a consistent name for a single year but to preserve the corporate name changes over the years.

Trade corrections

Trade emendation has been approached with more caution than other corrections. When the trade field is blank, I have not changed it unless an employer was specified. Then the trade was changed to either "emp" or "brick maker2" depending on the employer. Brickyard labourers also became "brick maker2". For other brickyard employees who are not "brick maker1" (identified by Might as a brick maker), a group of compound trades has been create e.g. "brick3-foreman", "brick3-mgr", "brick3-teamster" etc. Many of the "brick3-mgr" people should be "brick mnfr" (brickyard owner). Engraver and engineer have similar abbreviations and I have used comparison with other years and employer in an attempt to detect incorrect trade of "engineer".

Market gardening was an important activity in Humber Bay. The trade "mkt gdnr" indicates the owner of a small farm, "gdnr" is an employee of a "mkt gdnr". Might canvassers have compiled data which is mostly plausible but I suspect as many as 5% of the entries may be misclassified. I have not made any emendations in this industry. Note that for these two trades, the "employer" field usually contains a street address rather an employer name.

Almost all policemen, etc have been normalized to "constable". The exception is "co constable" which is an abbreviation for "county constable".

Residence entries

Residence entries begin with one of four codes:
hom - person is head of household
lvs - person lives at this address but is not head
bds - person boards at this address
res - person resides outside of Humber Bay (not always used)
The "lvs" and "bds" categories sometimes seem incorrect but I have not emended them.
Street numbers came to Humber Bay around 1923. Before that time, residence entries indicated north/south or east/west. (Streetcar stop number was rarely used but only applied to Lake Shore Shore rd.)

Anomalous years

1889 and 1890

Swansea was included in Humber Bay in 1889 and 1890. This resulted in many employees of Ont Bolt Co and Ont Rolling Mill Co residing on the east side of the river being included in Humber Bay. The 1890 data has 129 employees of the rolling mill and 100 at the bolt works. Of these 229 workers about 50 are listed in 1891 Swansea directory as residents. Another ten or so can be eliminated by street address. This still leaves a very large number workers from these two companies in 1890. This compares with 15 at the rolling mill and five at the bolt works for 1891. These two facilities apparently shutdown in 1893 and 1894 respectively. Tor Bolt & Forging had employees residing in Humber Bay in 1902 thru 1906. Early 20th century data shows people working as "bolt mkr" or "nut mkr" but no employer is given until Stelco appeared in 1922. I have decided not to purge Swansea data from 1889 and 1890.

1914 Humber Extension

In 1914 the city of Toronto was contemplating an amalgamation with sundry villages known as the HUMBER VALLEY EXTENSION. Might anticipated this and consolidated alphabetic directories for HUMBER BAY with all the other villages in the proposed amalgamation. I have attempted to construct a 1914 Humber Bay alphabetic directory by extracting from the Humber Valley Extension entry provided by Might's. The primary technique was to find the street names appearing in the 1915 Humber Bay directory. Householder and business data on those streets was selected. Some tenant data was included for family names such as Hicks and Orr. This method has two consequences:
Most tenant and worker data is absent.
Some Swansea and Mimico data is included as Queen and Lake Shore extend beyond the Humber Bay area.

1923 to 1925 Might Directories

The 1923 to 1925 format is unusual. For each street in HUMBER BAY, an abbreviated street directory is included. An entry here has house number and name only and lacks occupational and spousal data. (This street directory content foreshadows the 1930 to 2001 format). This is followed by an alphabetic directory similar to those in 1889 thru 1928 directories. I have omitted those street directories.

Changes which might be disputed

Some of my emendations might be questioned by historians. Some Might errors seemed obvious to me. This lists changes which I have made and not made. VERSUS indicates a name which probably should be changed but for which I was unable to find a correct version. For some names such as "Bellamore" I suspect there is no correct version.

FIRST NAME CHANGES

Chas TO Charles
Edwd TO Edward
Geo TO George
Jas TO James
Jos TO Joseph
Michl TO Michael
Patk TO Patrick
Richd TO Richard
Robt TO Robert
Thos TO Thomas
William TO Wm

Trade codes were emended as follows