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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 Chester (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 Chester. 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 Chester ...

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.

In past government published Postal Guides, Chester was referred to as Chester Courthouse.

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

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 northwest 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 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 west 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.

Chester is located in Randolph County and is the County Seat.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Randolph County: Jackson, Monroe, Perry, Saint Clair, Washington, Perry (MO) & Sainte Genevieve (MO).

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

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

Cemeteries Near Chester ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Chester.

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 Chester - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

  • St. Marys Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the north)
  • Evergreen Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the northwest)
  • St. Johns Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the north)
  • Mann Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the north)
  • Nativity Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
  • Kirk Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
  • Frazer Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
  • Tindall Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
  • Grah Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the east)
  • Draves Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the east)
  • Woods Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southeast)
  • Moore Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southeast)
  • Continue List   (265 more) ...
    • Fulford Cemetery
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the east)
    • Paradise Cemetery
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northeast)
    • Zion Cemetery
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)

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.<2>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Chester had a population of 2,708 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Chester had a population of 8,145 people.

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

  • Menard
    (Less than 2 miles to the west)
  • Claryville
    (Less than 2 miles to the south)
    • Claryville is located in Perry County (MO)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Claryville
  • Belgique
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
    • Belgique is located in Perry County (MO)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Belgique
  • Bremen
    (5 miles [8 km] to the northeast)
  • New Palestine
    (5 miles [8 km] to the north)
  • Kaskaskia
    (5 miles [8 km] to the west)
    • Kaskaskia is located in Randolph County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Kaskaskia
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 13 people
  • Lithium
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southwest)
    • Lithium is located in Perry County (MO)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lithium
  • Welge
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northeast)
  • Saint Mary
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the west)
    • Saint Mary is located in Sainte Genevieve County (MO)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Saint Mary
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 345 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Saint Mary <1>
  • Sereno
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the south)
  • Point Rest
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
    • Point Rest is located in Perry County (MO)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Point Rest
  • Rockwood
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
  • Continue List   (15 more) ...

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Chester ...

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 107 newspapers that have been published in the area around Chester.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Chester. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Chester and those printed in the larger area surrounding Chester.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 23 miles [37 km]<3> of Chester.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first turn to 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 Chester:

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>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 Chester, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<3>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Chester) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.