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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 Downers Grove (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 Downers Grove. 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 Downers Grove ...

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 Downers Grove: Downers Grv.
  • While the name of this village is Downers Grove, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Downers Grove may originally have been Downer's Grove.

    Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Downers Grove might be written as Downer Grove.

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

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 northeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals 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.

Downers Grove is located in DuPage County.

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 DuPage County: Cook, Kane, Kendall & Will.

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

  • DuPage County     (The home county of Downers Grove)
  • Cook County
  • Grundy County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Downers Grove, with the one closest to Downers Grove listed first.
    • Minooka
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southwest)
    • Channahon
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the southwest)
  • Kane County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Downers Grove, with the one closest to Downers Grove listed first.
    • Batavia
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the west)
    • Aurora
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the west)
    • Geneva
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the west)
    • Mooseheart
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the west)
    • North Aurora
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the west)
      • North Aurora is located in Kane County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for North Aurora
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 18,144 people
    • Saint Charles
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Coleman
      (18 miles [29 km] to the northwest)
    • South Elgin
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the northwest)
      • South Elgin is located in Kane County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for South Elgin
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 24,646 people
    • Bonnie
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the northwest)
      • Bonnie is located in Kane County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bonnie
      • Bonnie has also been known as:
      • Bonnie Valley
    • Campton Hills
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the northwest)
      • Campton Hills is located in Kane County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Campton Hills
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 11,063 people
      • Campton Hills has also been known as:
      • Campton Hills village
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Campton Hills <2>
    • Elgin
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Sugar Grove
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the west)
  • Kendall County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Downers Grove, with the one closest to Downers Grove listed first.
    • Boulder Hill
      (18 miles [29 km] to the west)
      • Boulder Hill is located in Kendall County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Boulder Hill
    • Montgomery
      (18 miles [29 km] to the west)
    • Oswego
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the southwest)
    • Bristol
      (23 miles [37 km] to the west)
    • Yorkville
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the southwest)
    • Plattville
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southwest)
      • Plattville is located in Kendall County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Plattville
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 257 people
    • Plano
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the west)
      • Plano is located in Kendall County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Plano
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 11,879 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Plano <2>
    • Little Rock
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the west)
      • Little Rock is located in Kendall County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Little Rock
  • Lake County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Downers Grove, with the one closest to Downers Grove listed first.
    • Buffalo Grove
      (23 miles [37 km] to the north)
    • Deer Park
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the north)
    • Deerfield
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the north)
    • Riverwoods
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the north)
    • Aptakisic
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
    • Kildeer
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
    • Lake Zurich
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
    • Long Grove
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
    • Prairie View
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
    • Braeside
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the northeast)
      • Braeside is located in Lake County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Braeside
    • Bannockburn
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the north)
    • Forest Lake
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the north)
  • McHenry County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Downers Grove, with the one closest to Downers Grove listed first.
    • Fox River Grove
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the north)
    • Algonquin
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)
    • Lake-in-the-Hills
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northwest)
    • Trout Valley
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northwest)
      • Trout Valley is located in McHenry County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Trout Valley
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 508 people
    • Cary
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the northwest)
      • Cary is located in McHenry County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cary
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 17,929 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Cary <2>
  • Will County
  • Lake County (IN)

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

Cemeteries Near Downers Grove ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Downers Grove.

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 Downers Grove - one of the links might be able to help.

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Downers Grove, with the one closest to Downers Grove 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.<4>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Downers Grove had a population of 960 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Downers Grove had a population of 48,727 people.

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

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Downers Grove ...

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 87 newspapers that have been published in the area around Downers Grove.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Downers Grove. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Downers Grove and those printed in the larger area surrounding Downers Grove.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 11 miles [17.7 km]<5> of Downers Grove.

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 professional and volunteer 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 Downers Grove:

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>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<3>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.
<4>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 Downers Grove, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<5>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' (or 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- Downers Grove) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.