In the year 1859 the proprietor and editor of the Ceylon Observer, A. M. Ferguson, published a compilation entitled Ceylon: Summary of Useful Information and Plantation Gazetteer. This handbook included a list of the principal coffee plantations, their locations and the names of their owners. Under somewhat different titles, similar handbooks were produced in 1861, 1863, 1864, 1865, 1866–8 and 1870–1. From 1863 the title was The Ceylon Directory, Calendar and Compendium of Useful Information and in 1883–4 it was altered to The Ceylon Handbook and Directory Calendar and Compendium of Useful Information, and an increasingly elaborate compilation was published every year or every other year. In this work A. M. Ferguson was assisted by his nephew, John Ferguson, and by the staff attached to their newspaper. In the twentieth century, the new proprietors of the Ceylon Observer continued this annual publication.

In compiling the lists of plantations the Fergusons drew upon their own extensive knowledge and their wide range of contacts among European planters, which they used to elicit the necessary information through correspondence. As the procedure was routinised, then, the plantation directories were compiled on the basis of information supplied on a voluntary basis by the agency houses and plantation owners themselves. These entries were revised every year. To quote from the Directory for 1890: ‘The Estates Directory has been corrected to the end of April 1890– numerous “proofs” having been circulated for that purpose, many hundred of applications by letter having been made, and due revision having been afforded by the Colombo Agents.