Do you know of Portage Lake ???
This page is an orphan - a placeholder until we can discover more about Portage Lake. 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 Portage Lake.
We found mention of Portage Lake as a post office (see Mentions and References below), but can't determine its location - other than being located somewhere in Jackson County, Michigan.
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.
From the Blevins / Hellbock List: The post office opened in 1844 and closed in 1863.
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.
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.
Communities Also Named Portage Lake ...
We found three communities that share the name Portage Lake.
There is one other community in Michigan which is also named Portage Lake.
Beyond Michigan, we know of another two communities that are located throughout in the United States.
- Communities Located In Michigan ...
- Saint Joseph County
- We found mention of this community, but have little information.<1> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Michigan community of Portage Lake [Saint Joseph County].
- Saint Joseph County
- Communities Elsewhere In North America ...
- Maine
- Aroostook County
- Please visit our profile page for the Maine community of Portage Lake [Aroostook County].
- Minnesota
- Cass County
- We found mention of this community, but have little information.<1> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Minnesota community of Portage Lake [Cass County].
- Maine
Miscellaneous References and Mentions for Portage Lake ...
We've created the following list to keep track of the sources that proved useful in adding to our knowledge about Portage Lake:
Found in a comprehensive list of Post Offices that was created by Cameron Blevins and Richard Helbock.<2>
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 Jackson 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 Jackson County.
Footnotes ...
| <1> | 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 Bird Creek to see Pete ... Bird Creek 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 Portage Lake 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. |
| <2> | A copy of their list with background information can be found at: https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/data-biography/ |