The Christine Freeman Directory is itself an historical treasure. Christine Holaway Freeman (1921-2006) devoted the last decades of her life to the preservation of Nevada City and its history. As the owner and resident of the home of Aaron Augustus Sargent (1827-1887) at 449 Broad street, and the owner of the Kidd and Knox Building at 228-236 Broad on the corner of Broad and Pine, she was a dedicated restorationist.
    As a business woman and Nevada City planning commissioner, she was a publicist for expanding the Historical District, increasing housing, stemming the tide of new bars, and keeping hot tub outlets and mall-like office and professional complexes out of the city. A Union editorial took her to task for grumbling about too many offices in Nevada City and saying to let Grass Valley have them. (The Union, Friday, 27 September 1993, pages 1, 3; Monday, 30 September 1993, page 5).
    Freeman is also the compiler of the present directory, subtitled "Combing People, Places and Events of Nevada County from 1848". A draft of the directory was found among her belongings after she died, in the form of over a ream of ratchet-fed paper, which had been spit out of a dot-matrix printer in a non-proportional typewriter font, with a word processor that probably used floppy disks, possibly of the kind that actually flopped. The pages are interspersed with a few illustrations and hand-written notes.
    The executor of Freeman's estate presented the directory and other materials she had collected to Searls Historical Library, a stones throw from the Providence Mine Road, where a downsized version of the office complex Freeman opposed was eventually built. The library came up with the title, covers, and the legend of the abbreviations Freeman used to refer to her sources. (Story of Searls Historical Library acquisition based on an account shared by library director Pat Chestnut, email 2024/11/01.)
    The directory runs 646 pages, and is divided into two volumes -- Volume 1 (A-I) -- and this volume, Volume 2 (J-Z). The "A" section has 19 pages with 256 names, 31 of them of businesses and places. Researchers who use Freeman's directory will also want to consult David Comstock's Lives of Nevada County Pioneers, which runs 559 double-column pages. Though it has fewer entries, on just people, its entries are much longer. Its "A" section runs 14 pages with information on 94 people.

Author: Christine Freeman (1924-2006)
Publisher: Christine Freeman
Published: undated, NLT 2006
Subjects: People, Places, Events, Nevada County
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