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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 Fort Dodge (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 Fort Dodge. 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 Fort Dodge ...

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 occur.

  • A typical abbreviation for Fort Dodge: Ft. Dodge
  • In past government published Postal Guides, Fort Dodge was referred to as Fort Dodge Courthouse.

You might be interested in other communities that are also named Fort Dodge. More information can be found on our Tidbits & Trivia Page for Fort Dodge.

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.

For more information about how community names might have been affected by the Board of Geographic Names (BGN), see our page about Placename Rules.

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 northeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and doctors were in the next county to the east. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the north.

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 east contained birth and death records; the county to the north 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.

Fort Dodge is located in Webster County and is the County Seat.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Webster County: Boone, Calhoun, Greene, Hamilton, Humboldt, Pocahontas & Wright.

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

  • Webster County     (The home county of Fort Dodge)
  • Boone County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Fort Dodge, with the one closest to Fort Dodge listed first.
    • Boxholm
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the south)
    • Pilot Mound
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the south)
    • Fraser
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the south)
      • Fraser is located in Boone County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Fraser
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 103 people
    • Centerville
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the southeast)
      • Centerville is located in Boone County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Centerville
  • Calhoun County
  • Greene County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Fort Dodge, with the one closest to Fort Dodge listed first.
    • Paton
      (23 miles [37 km] to the south)
    • Dana
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the south)
    • Churdan
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southwest)
  • Hamilton County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Fort Dodge, with the one closest to Fort Dodge listed first.
    • Webster City
      (18 miles [29 km] to the east)
    • Stratford
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the southeast)
    • Kamrar
      (23 miles [37 km] to the east)
    • Stanhope
      (23 miles [37 km] to the southeast)
      • Stanhope is located in Hamilton County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Stanhope
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 394 people
    • Blairsburg
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the east)
      • Blairsburg is located in Hamilton County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Blairsburg
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 199 people
    • Jewell
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the southeast)
  • Humboldt County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Fort Dodge, with the one closest to Fort Dodge listed first.
    • Thor
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the northeast)
    • Dakota City
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the north)
    • Humboldt
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the north)
    • Pioneer
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the northwest)
      • Pioneer is located in Humboldt County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Pioneer
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 22 people
    • Rutland
      (18 miles [29 km] to the north)
    • Gilmore City
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the northwest)
    • Arnold
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the north)
    • Hardy
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the north)
    • Renwick
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the northeast)
    • Bradgate
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the northwest)
      • Bradgate is located in Humboldt County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bradgate
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 84 people
    • Livermore
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the north)
      • Livermore is located in Humboldt County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Livermore
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 361 people
    • Bode
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
    • Ottosen
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the north)
      • Ottosen is located in Humboldt County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ottosen
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 36 people
  • Kossuth County
    • Lu Verne
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the north)
  • Pocahontas County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Fort Dodge, with the one closest to Fort Dodge listed first.
    • Palmer
      (23 miles [37 km] to the west)
    • Rolfe
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)
    • Pocahontas
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the northwest)
  • Wright County

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

Cemeteries Near Fort Dodge ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Fort Dodge.

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 Fort Dodge - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

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>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Fort Dodge had a population of 4,871 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Fort Dodge had a population of 23,906 people.

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

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Fort Dodge ...

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 143 newspapers that have been published in the area around Fort Dodge.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Fort Dodge. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Fort Dodge and those printed in the larger area surrounding Fort Dodge.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<4> of Fort Dodge.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we begin 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 Fort Dodge:

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 Fort Dodge, 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' (or point-to-point) distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Fort Dodge) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.