All our yesterdays...

The Town Directories were a very fruitful source of information.   Here is a corner of the Dumfries one for 1953.    The contained all the addresses in the town with the name of the householder, and then another index with all the householders in the town and their address alongside.   Plus, of course, all the ads for local businesses, handy telephone numbers, etc.

And all this done in the days before computers.

My grandmother's name is the fifth one down.   And the Chemist in the advert at the top of the page is where my mother went to work when she left school.