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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
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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 Wayne (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 Wayne. 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.

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 hospitals and doctors 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.

Wayne is located in Maricopa County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Maricopa County: Gila, La Paz, Pima, Pinal, Yavapai & Yuma.

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

  • Maricopa County     (The home county of Wayne)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Wayne, with the one closest to Wayne listed first.
    • Citrus Park
      (2 miles [3.2 km] to the southwest)
      • Citrus Park is located in Maricopa County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Citrus Park
    • Waddell
      (2 miles [3.2 km] to the west)
    • Surprise
      (5 miles [8 km] to the north)
    • El Mirage
      (5 miles [8 km] to the northeast)
    • Litchfield Park
      (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
    • Youngtown
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the east)
    • Sun City West
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northeast)
    • Sun City
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the east)
    • Sunset Village
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the east)
      • Sunset Village is located in Maricopa County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sunset Village
    • Goodyear
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the south)
    • Peoria Polynesian Village
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
    • Avondale
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the south)
    • Liberty Village
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
      • Liberty Village is located in Maricopa County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Liberty Village
  • Pinal County
    • Santa Cruz
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the southeast)
      • Santa Cruz is located in Pinal County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Santa Cruz

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

Cemeteries Near Wayne ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Wayne.

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.

Although we don't have the information ourselves, if you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our list of websites on our Genealogy Helper Page for Wayne - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

  • White Tanks Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the south)
  • Sunwest Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the northeast)
  • Goodyear Farms Historic Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southeast)
  • Heath Grave
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southeast)
  • Sunland Memorial Park
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the northeast)
  • Holy Cross Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
  • Russian Molokan Cemetery
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the east)
  • Glendale Memorial Park
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
  • West Resthaven Park Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for West Resthaven Park Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the West Resthaven Park Cemetery is a very large cemetery that is located in Glendale.
    • The West Resthaven Park Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Resthaven Cemetery
    • Resthaven Park West Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #57098 <2>
  • Louis B Hazelton Memorial Cemetery
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the southwest)
  • Home Mission Cemetery
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the north)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Home Mission Cemetery
    • The Home Mission Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Sleeping Bride Cemetery
  • Liberty Cemetery
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
  • Continue List   (29 more) ...

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.<3>

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

These communities are listed based on their distance from Wayne, with the one closest to Wayne listed first.

  • Peoria
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
    • Peoria is located in Maricopa County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Peoria
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 179,872 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Peoria <1>
  • Buckeye
    (16 miles [25.7 km] to the southwest)
  • Phoenix
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the east)
    • Phoenix is located in Maricopa County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Phoenix
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,708,127 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Phoenix <1>
  • Tempe
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the east)
    • Tempe is located in Maricopa County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Tempe
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 200,402 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Tempe <1>
  • Vulture City ‑ Historic
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northwest)
    • Vulture City is located in Maricopa County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Vulture City
    • Vulture City has also been known as:
    • Vulture Mine
    • Vulture

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

Newspapers Published in Wayne ...

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 47 newspapers that have been published in the area around Wayne.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Wayne, there are papers which were published within 17 miles [27.4 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Wayne.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we start with the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These helpful websites 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 Wayne:

Footnotes ...

<1>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<2>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.
<3>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 Wayne, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<4>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Wayne) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.