(I actually work at a county historical society and have access to a ton of information, but I'm very new here and still getting a feel for our collection, which is pretty vast.)
I know how to trace a chain of title, but that only tells us who owned the parcel of land. I'm more curious about the people who actually occupied the buildings — not always necessarily the landowner. Could you suggest some ways I might be able to research this? Any ideas at all would be appreciated.
For example, one building that's presently a single-family home previously served as housing for employees who worked at the mill across the road in the 1880s. Their names aren't on the deed, but maybe there are other ways to trace them. Thanks tons for any suggestions.
This is a very common community archives question. City directories are the go-to source for this, they were published usually yearly in decent sized towns. They were the phone book before the phone, and would have addresses and people who lived there. Another especially good thing about city directories from the olden days is that they often give race information, and that sort of important demographic information about neighborhood makeup can be tricky to find, other than the census, and city directories were published way more often than that.
Here's what they look like. Many are digitized, but if you're at a county historical society and you can't walk 100 ft and grab them of the reference shelf, I'd be shocked! :)