Family Historian User Group

I've been going through Kelly's Directories for Cornwall for 1930 - 1935 - 1939 trying to find an entry for my great uncle who ran a shop and was sub postmaster in a tiny village there. So far I haven't been able to find him although I sure we has there. I have two elderly relatives who say they remember visiting shortly before WW2 and they even remembered the street name. Having gone through the whole of the Kellys trade names list as well as the specific village I can't find any trace of him. I have though found him in a 1956 phone book on Ancestry living in the road that his shop/PO I believe was in. (He was 65 in 1956 and from other evidence - Will, Death Cert - he appears to have retired and moved out the village later that year). So far I haven't found him in earlier phone books but I'm now working backwards to see if I can find him. There's even a house in the road called 'The Old Post Office' which is likely to have been where he ran the shop/sub-PO.

My question really is this. How did Kelly's find and identify all the small businesses in Cornish villages and who was running them in the 1930s? One possibility is that somehow his business escaped Kelly's notice, but I've thought of Kelly's as pretty reliable. I'm told Kellys ceased publication after 1939 and post-WW2 there is no equivalent

I don't know how Kelly's directories identified all the small businesses but in my experience they have always identified post offices (or sub-post offices) as they were important socially and commercially. I have found ancestors who ran a shop/sub post office in a small Somerset village in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, correctly listed in several Kelly's directories. Some of the earlier directories even state what time the letters arrived from and were dispatched to the nearest large town, and where the nearest money order office was.

Have you tried searching earlier directories, to see if the shop/PO was listed at an earlier date, under different management? If you browse the entries for the street in the 1911 census, was there any property there listed as a shop/PO at that date? If you have not been able to find any sub post office at all recorded in the village, perhaps the shop did not take on the role of sub post office until a slightly later date?

If you could post some more clues about the name of the village, the street, the shop, the owner, etc, then those FHUG members familiar with Kelly's Directories and 1911 Census details will no doubt search for you.
"Many eyes make search work."

Dennis,

There's some useful information on Directories and how they were compiled at: https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/ ... _and_Wales

Mervyn