Branson’s North Carolina Business Directory is currently being digitized and uploaded to the Internet Archives website.
This historical directory is organized alphabetically by county and gives information on the county, names of the towns and post offices, county and town officers and magistrates, churches, ministers, hotels, lawyers, manufacturers, tradesmen, mines, mills, newspapers, merchants, schools, physicians, farmers, teachers, and so on. It also contains a list of railroads and an index to advertisements found throughout the book.
This is a great source for locating your ancestors and learning about what they did for occupations and for getting a good picture of the kinds of things that were happening around town during that time period.
These books are fully searchable and several have already been digitized by UNC and uploaded to the internet archives website. Click here to access a list of available titles ranging from 1867 – 1896.