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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 Pearl River (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 Pearl River. 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 Pearl River ...

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.

For example, a typical abbreviation for Pearl River: Pearl Riv.

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

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 Parishes/Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring parishes/counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the southeast corner of their home parish. During their lives, most hospitals were in the next parish to the east. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the parish to the south.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring parishes/counties instead of the parish in which they lived:  their home parish contained property and probate records; the parish to the east contained birth and death records; the parish to the south contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring parishes/counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Pearl River is located in Saint Tammany Parish.

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

The following parishes adjoin and form the boundaries of Saint Tammany Parish: Jefferson, Orleans, Tangipahoa, Washington, Hancock (MS) & Pearl River (MS).

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

  • Saint Tammany Parish     (The home parish of Pearl River)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Pearl River, with the one closest to Pearl River listed first.
    • Hickory
      (3 miles [4.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Northwood Village
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the south)
      • Northwood Village is located in Saint Tammany Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Northwood Village
    • Lake Village
      (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
      • Lake Village is located in Saint Tammany Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lake Village
    • Tanglewood Village
      (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
      • Tanglewood Village is located in Saint Tammany Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Tanglewood Village
    • Browns Village
      (5 miles [8 km] to the southwest)
      • Browns Village is located in Saint Tammany Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Browns Village
    • Bon Village
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the south)
      • Bon Village is located in Saint Tammany Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bon Village
    • Slidell
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the south)
    • Huntwyck Village
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southwest)
      • Huntwyck Village is located in Saint Tammany Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Huntwyck Village
    • McClane City
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the south)
      • McClane City is located in Saint Tammany Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for McClane City
    • Lake Shore Village
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the south)
      • Lake Shore Village is located in Saint Tammany Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lake Shore Village
    • Eden Isle
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the south)
      • Eden Isle is located in Saint Tammany Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Eden Isle
    • Oak Harbor
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the south)
      • Oak Harbor is located in Saint Tammany Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Oak Harbor
  • Orleans Parish
    • The following are listed by their distance from Pearl River, with the one closest to Pearl River listed first.
    • Lake Catherine
      (18 miles [29 km] to the south)
      • Lake Catherine is located in Orleans Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lake Catherine
    • Pine Village
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the southwest)
      • Pine Village is located in Orleans Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Pine Village
    • Milneburg
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the southwest)
  • Washington Parish
  • Hancock County (MS)
  • Harrison County (MS)
  • Pearl River County (MS)

For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Pearl River, see our Parish-by-Parish Page for Pearl River.

Cemeteries Near Pearl River ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Pearl River.

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 Pearl River - one of the links might be able to help.

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Pearl River, with the one closest to Pearl River 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 Pearl River had a population of 125 people in 1895 with a post office and no railroad service. In 2020, Pearl River had a population of 2,618 people.

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

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

Newspapers Published in Pearl River ...

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 24 newspapers that have been published in the area around Pearl River.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Pearl River, there are papers which were published within 11 miles [17.7 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Pearl River.

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 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 Pearl River:

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 Pearl River, 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 from Point A (ie- Pearl River) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.