Congressional Directory

The indispensable guide to each session of Congress is the Congressional Directory, which contains biographical sketches of members of Congress, their committee assignments, seniority rankings, and seating charts in the chambers, as well as statistical data and other information about sessions, committees, staff, the Capitol, the press galleries, the diplomatic corps, and the executive and judicial branches of the federal government.

Begun as a private publication in the 1820s, the first directories listed the Washington residences of senators and representatives at a time when members lived in hotels or rented rooms in boardinghouses. Since the boarders ate their meals together, as at a military mess hall, these residences were known as “messes.” The directories listed members’ addresses as the Washington Mess at Mrs. Wilson's boardinghouse or Dowson's Crowd at Mrs. Dowson's of Capitol Hill.

In 1860, journalist Benjamin Perley Poore published an expanded Congressional Directory that established many of the volume's current features. Poore later became clerk of the Senate Committee on Printing, which in 1865 made the Congressional Directory a government publication. The Joint Committee on Printing continues to edit the annual Congressional Directory, which the Government Printing Office publishes and sells.

Sources

• James Sterling Young, The Washington Community, 1800–1828 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966)