CREDIT RATING GUIDES AS A GENEALOGICAL RESOURCE by John C. Engel, West Allis, Wisconsin (This article is an update of one that originally appeared in Wisconsin State Genealogical Society Newsletter, Vol. 41, No. 2 September 1994.) An intriguing resource for genealogists to consult is the credit rating guidebook, the low- tech predecessor to the modern credit bureau report. The various guidebooks may provide confidential evaluations of our ancestors, in the form of coded references to simple statements of creditworthiness. Unfortunately, not many credit guides survive today, apparently because the subscribing merchants agreed to return each volume when a new one was released. This article provides a survey of those available in Wisconsin. In them, I have found ratings for my wife's great grandmother, my great grandfather's flour mill, and my grand-uncle's restaurant. Consumer Credit Ratings. The earliest guide found is available at the research library of the Milwaukee County Historical Society ("MCHS") (658.86 L84). A copy of the "Merchants' Mutual Protective Register" dates from 1869. It lists negative credit ratings of about 800 residents of the Milwaukee area, along with occupation and address. The pejorative tone of the "key" to reports may be amusing, if not applied to one's own family. It is indeed interesting to find now prominent surnames among the shunned. The ratings offered are: A - Owes and collection doubtful. B - Bad, tough, or poor pay. C - Very slow, always behind. C2 - Rather slow, but may be good; goes beyond his means. D - "Dead beat": of no account for credit. E - Doubtful, caution, better not trust: may beat you in the end. F - Is responsible, and well situated to be prompt, but is slack and troublesome to collect of. G - Goes the rounds, and owes many accounts. H - Is honest, but poor and not responsible. K - Has no property, or nothing collectable. ? - For particulars inquire at the office. The State Historical Society of Wisconsin's library ("SHS") in Madison holds the 1883 "Retail Dealers' Protective Associations Confidential Reference Book" for Milwaukee and vicinity (G 902 M6.6R43). Ratings for individuals fill 221 pages. The "Commercial Report of Union Credit Company For Milwaukee, Wisconsin" began publication in 1887. It reported on indiviual Milwaukee residents who bought on credit. The directory lists their names, addresses, occupations, and code letters for the following ratings: A - Pays Cash B - Prompt Weekly C - Prompt Monthly D - Pays on Account E - Occasionally Slow F - Very Slow G - Promises Not Kept N - Unrecommended Credit P - C.O.D. "C" is by far the most common rating of the ratings above. Although it doesn't tell you much, it's certainly better than finding an ancestor had an F, G, or N. Of course, it also reveals whether the ancestor bought goods on credit from the subscribing merchants. The 1914 volume lists thousands of individuals and is preserved in the Humanities Room of the Milwaukee Public Library ("MPL") (R 332.7 U553). Don't be too dismayed if you should encounter a negative credit rating for your ancestor. Your ancestors had no legal right to learn their credit ratings or have erroneous information corrected. Credit rating guides listing individual consumers are no longer published. To the extent that the practice did not otherwise already die out, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act ("FCRA") prohibits credit reporting firms from reporting information about consumers unless the merchant has a specific dealing with the consumer. Thus, the practice of distributing massive lists of consumer credit ratings, most of whom the merchant will never encounter, is illegal. Credit bureaus provide individual credit reports upon certification by the merchant that the request for information is one permitted under the FCRA. Genealogists might consider exercising their right to purchase a copy of their own modern credit report for posterity. If you find inaccuracies, you may exercise your legal right to have the error corrected. This is a privilege your ancestors did not have! Business Credit Ratings. Additional credit rating guides are available that rate businesses only. Genealogists will still find them useful because they include craftsmen and other small proprietorships (blacksmiths, grocers, flour mills, liveries, etc.), as well as large employers. These works typically provide a rating (such as High, Good, Fair, or Limited) as well as an estimate of pecuniary strength (ranging from "Less than $500" to "Over $1,000,000"). The publishers of the business credit rating guides usually published on a state by state basis. Volumes covering the state of Wisconsin have entries organized by location, typically covering the smallest villages and hamlets as well as Milwaukee and other cities. Existing volumes include: 1869 Mercantile Agency Reference Book for All the Western States (incl. Wisconsin),184 pp., MCHS 977.A4 D897 1869. 1884 Bradstreets Reports of the State of Wisconsin, 519 pp., SHS F90251 B312. 1908 Mercantile Agency Reference Book, Wisconsin. MPL R 332 M545. 1920 1924 1927 1954 Reference Book of Dun & Bradstreet, Inc., Wisconsin, 635 pp., MPL R 380.1 D923. Dun & Bradstreet still publishes its Reference Book today, as well as its individual reports on firms. The individual reports still rely on creditors for credit ratings. The firm now also includes public record information (lien filings, judgments, etc.) and detailed questionnaires completed by the subject firms. The Dun & Bradstreet Collection, at Harvard Business School's Baker Library holds the original manuscript volumes of that firm's business credit guides. Sixty volumes (14,735 pages) are available for Wisconsin from 1843 to 1883, according to Margaret Walsh in "The Manufacturing Frontier" (Madison, 1972). As previously mentioned, credit rating guides were provided on a strictly confidential basis and were supposed to be returned to the publisher. Thus, libraries were not permitted to subscribe and few have made their way to public collections. Undoubtedly, additional copies can still be found in private hands. Copyright 1994, 2000 John C. Engel, B.A., M.L.S., J.D.