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Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:

  • That it be a tool which helps us with planning our trips.
  • We're trying to shape our Gazetteer as a tool to help us understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.
  • On our trips, we try to visit those places where our ancestors left their footprints.

By learning about Browns Crossing (and the surrounding area) during the time that our ancestors lived, we hope to have a better understanding of both their community and its relationship to their lifes. We hope that this tool helps to give us an insight into their world.

As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this our Genealogical Helper for Browns Crossing. While we don't have information that is specific to any given person or family, we intend to expand our understanding about where and how people lived.

Name Variations for Browns Crossing ...

When searching records, keep in mind that names and their spelling can change over time. Our sources include documents like maps, railroad schedules, Travel, Express and Shipping Guides. Many of these documents date from the 1800's and it's common to find spelling differences.

Although we can't give a definitive list, hopefully the following will give you a feel for the variations that might have occurred.

  • A typical abbreviation for Browns Crossing: Browns Xing.
  • While the name of this community is Browns Crossing, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Browns Crossing may originally have been Brown's Crossing.

    Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Browns Crossing might be written as Brown Crossing.

If you have information about these names (such as the reason for the change, date of change, the origin of the name), please Contact Us.

Neighboring Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the southwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors and hospitals were in the next county to the west. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the south.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring counties instead of the county in which they lived:  their home county contained property and probate records; the county to the west contained birth and death records; the county to the south contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Browns Crossing is located in Mohave County.

To see how the shape of Arizona's counties have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Mohave County: Coconino, La Paz, Yavapai, San Bernardino (CA), Clark (NV), Lincoln (NV), Kane (UT) & Washington (UT).

Below are the counties that are near Browns Crossing. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Browns Crossing:

  • Mohave County     (The home county of Browns Crossing)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Browns Crossing, with the one closest to Browns Crossing listed first.
    • Signal ‑ Historic
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the north)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Signal have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Signal
      • Signal is located in Mohave County
    • Nothing
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the northeast)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Nothing
      • Nothing is located in Mohave County
    • Wikieup
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the north)
  • La Paz County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Browns Crossing, with the one closest to Browns Crossing listed first.
    • Alamo Crossing ‑ Historic
      (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southwest)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Alamo Crossing have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Alamo Crossing
      • Alamo Crossing is located in La Paz County
    • Swansea ‑ Historic
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the southwest)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Swansea have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Swansea
      • Swansea is located in La Paz County
  • Maricopa County
    • Cullen's Well ‑ Historic
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the south)
      • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for Cullen's Well. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<4>
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cullen's Well
      • Cullen's Well is located in Maricopa County
  • Yavapai County

For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Browns Crossing, see our County-by-County Page for Browns Crossing.

Newspapers Published in Browns Crossing ...

An ongoing effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has resulted in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

To share their results, the partnership has created the Chronicling America website. The goal of this partnership is to assemble a database about the current and historic newspapers of the United States. This includes a growing collection of scanned images from selected papers. All of it available to the public on their website.

Using information that we've taken from the Chronicling America website, we've identified 2 newspapers that have been published in the area around Browns Crossing.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Browns Crossing, there are papers which were published within 28 miles [45.1 km]<5>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Browns Crossing.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first visit the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These websites either offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to everyone.

To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Browns Crossing:

Cemeteries Near Browns Crossing ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Browns Crossing.

This is a new section and is likely to have errors. If you find an error, such as a missing cemetery or we have the wrong name, please let us know. If you know of them, we would also appreciate learning about previous or alternate names.

If you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our selection of Genealogy Websites (see below).

If not found below, our Cemetery List for Browns Crossing covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Browns Crossing, with the one closest to Browns Crossing listed first.

  • Olea Ranch Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the east)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for the Olea Ranch Cemetery. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<4>
    • The Olea Ranch Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Campas Cemetery
    • Three Rivers Ranch Cemetery
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Olea Ranch Cemetery
  • Signal Area Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the north)
  • Lopez Ranch Cemetery
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the west)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for the Lopez Ranch Cemetery. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<4>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Lopez Ranch Cemetery
  • Santa Maria Pioneer Cemetery
    (21 miles [33.8 km] to the east)
  • Sandy Cemetery
    (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
  • Culling's Well Cemetery
    (27 miles [43.5 km] to the south)
  • Masten Family Cemetery
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the north)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for the Masten Family Cemetery. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<4>
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Masten Family Cemetery is located in Wikieup.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Masten Family Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2250802 <6>

Nearby Communities in 1895 ...

We've built the following list with information that came from an Atlas published by Rand McNally in 1895. The Atlas had details such as the population of the community (which appears to have come from the 1890 Census) and whether there was a post office and/or railroad service available. We also indicate if the community no longer exists and is now historic.<7>

While we didn't find Browns Crossing in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Browns Crossing.

  • Signal ‑ Historic
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the north)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Signal have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Signal
    • Signal is located in Mohave County

We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Browns Crossing. See our List of 1890's Communities around Browns Crossing.

Unfortunately, we don't know of a website for Browns Crossing. If you can help, please contact us through our Feedback Page.

The official website for Mohave County: www.co.mohave.az.us/

The official website for State of Arizona: https://az.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>It's generally believed that possessive apostrophes are removed to prevent confusion on maps where the apostrophe may be confused with a cartographic symbol. While this is generally true, it's not uncommon to find possessive apostrophes in administrative names (such as towns or counties).
<2>The location has been supplied by the Geographic Names Information System - which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). While these values should be definitive, we found that accuracy can vary and you should double-check the location if accuracy is required.
<3>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<4>An 'estimated' location is one where we have been given GPS coordinates, but are unable to verify the accuracy of those coordinates. That said, we have some confidence that we have placed the marker near the actual location. A typical reason for being unable to verify a location is that it might be on private property or maybe historic and gone without an obvious trace.
<5>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Browns Crossing) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Browns Crossing. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 34.2942, Longitude: -113.5463       In this case, the coordinates for Browns Crossing have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<6>The Find-a-Grave website is an excellent research tool with information about a cemetery's location and interments. They also offer a forum for their members which can provide additional help. More information about Find-a-Grave can be found on their website: findagrave.com.
<7>We use the term 'Historic' broadly and it generally means that the community no longer exists. However, it can also mean that the community might still exist, but was significantly larger or had a more 'official' existence in the past than it does now. Unfortunately our sources of data have proven to be unreliable. If you can provide us with more specific information about Browns Crossing, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 07 Apr 2024