Do you know of Okaw ???

This page is an orphan - a placeholder until we can discover more about Okaw. When we encounter a name that is new to us, we add it to our Gazetteer with the hope that we'll discover more information in the future. Such is the case with Okaw.<1>

We found mention of Okaw as a post office (see Mentions and References below), but can't determine its location - other than being located somewhere in Washington County, Illinois.

It's common that the post office is named the same as the community in which it's located (although that's not always case). In this case, we can't match this post office to any of the existing communities in our gazetteer.<2>

From the Blevins / Hellbock List: The post office opened in 1836 and closed in 1872.

Communities Also Named Okaw ...

We found two communities that share the name Okaw.

Within Illinois, the name Okaw is unique.

Beyond Illinois, we know of another two communities that are located throughout in the United States.

Communities Elsewhere In North America ...
- Kansas
  - Harper County
  - We found mention of this community, but have little information.<3> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Kansas community of Okaw [Harper County].
  - Kingman County
  - We found mention of this community, but have little information. For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Kansas community of Okaw [Kingman County].

Miscellaneous References and Mentions for Okaw ...

We've created the following list to keep track of the sources that proved useful in adding to our knowledge about Okaw:

Found in a comprehensive list of Post Offices that was created by Cameron Blevins and Richard Helbock.<4>

List of Post Offices in the United States (1870)
Published by the Government Printing Office

Table of U.S. Post Offices in the United States (Jan. 1851)
Published by W. & J.C. Greer, Printers

U.S. Post Offices (Oct. 1846)
Published by John T. Towers

More Orphans in Washington County ...

Can you help?

As we explained above, when we encounter a name that might be a community or a post office we add it to our Gazetteer. If we have little information to go with the name, we call them Orphans. Below are Orphans that we believe to be located in Washington County.

Beauchamp
Bois	Meinert

Dubois	Oakville Station

Elkhorn	Sassafras Hill
	Suburban Heights
Grand Point
	Three Mile Prairie
Half Moon Lake

Footnotes ...

<1>	This entry could have originated in error. It might be that a source had a misprint, was simply wrong or we made a transcription error while referencing it. Many of the documents we reference are from the 1800s and the early 1900s, with some easier to read than others.
<2>	Part of the difficulty in identifying whether a name is a post office or a community lies with how Post Offices were named. We've prepared an article with our understanding of how post offices were named: Naming of Post Offices.
<3>	If we encounter the name of what might be a community, our methodology is to add that name to our Gazetteer as a placeholder. As we find more information about that community, it will be added to our Gazetteer. Just as a reminder: Our definition of a community is rather broad and includes those places (or areas) where several families lived and had a name which identified that place. For example, you might hear somebody say that they are going over to Mile's to see Pete ... Mile's is just a gas station and a couple of homes at the crossroads. While it might not be on the map, everybody in the area knows it by that name. Places of interest include buildings at a crossroad, several families clustered in a hollow or maybe the location of a way station. It also includes places like mines, lumber camps, ferry crossings, etc. The community might still exist, is now gone or only existed for just a short period of time. Also keep in mind that Okaw could have been on the original document by mistake, misspelled, the original/alternate name of a community that we've listed elsewhere or was placed in the wrong county. Sometimes a post office or train station would have a different name than the community where it's located, so two names might be referring to the same community - we're working to straighten it all out.
<4>	A copy of their list with background information can be found at: https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/data-biography/