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The Commemorative Quarter for Michigan





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 Urbandale (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 Urbandale. 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.

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 southwest 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 south.

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 south 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.

Urbandale is located in Kent County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Kent County: Allegan, Barry, Ionia, Montcalm, Muskegon, Newaygo & Ottawa.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Urbandale ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Urbandale.

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.

If you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our selection of Genealogy Websites (see below).

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Urbandale, with the one closest to Urbandale 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.<5>

While we didn't find Urbandale in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Urbandale.

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

  • Grandville
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
  • Grand Rapids
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the northeast)
  • Jenison
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
  • Carlisle
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the south)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for Carlisle. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<3>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Carlisle
    • Carlisle is located in Kent County
    • Google driving directions:
    • From your current location to Carlisle
    • From Urbandale to Carlisle
  • East Paris
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the east)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for East Paris have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for East Paris
    • East Paris is located in Kent County
  • Byron Center
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the south)
  • Kinney
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northwest)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for Kinney. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<3>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Kinney
    • Kinney is located in Kent County
    • Google driving directions:
    • From your current location to Kinney
    • From Urbandale to Kinney
  • Dutton
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
  • Tallmadge
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the northwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Tallmadge have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Tallmadge
    • Tallmadge is located in Ottawa County
  • Hudsonville
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southwest)
  • Ross
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the south)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Ross have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ross
    • Ross is located in Kent County
  • Corinth
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the south)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for Corinth. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<3>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Corinth
    • Corinth is located in Kent County
    • Google driving directions:
    • From your current location to Corinth
    • From Urbandale to Corinth
  • Continue List   (13 more) ...
    • Jamestown
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southwest)
    • Cascade
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the east)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Cascade have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cascade
      • Cascade is located in Kent County
    • Ada
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the east)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Ada have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ada
      • Ada is located in Kent County
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Ada <1>

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

Newspapers Published in Urbandale ...

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 218 newspapers that have been published in the area around Urbandale.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Urbandale, there are papers which were published within 24 miles [38.6 km]<6>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Urbandale.

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 Urbandale:

Unfortunately, we don't know of a website for Urbandale. If you can help, please contact us through our Feedback Page.

The official website for Kent County: www.accesskent.com/

The official website for State of Michigan: https://www.michigan.gov/

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 location has been supplied by the Geographic Names Information System - which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). While these values should be definitive, we found that accuracy can vary and you should double-check the location if accuracy is required.
<3>An 'estimated' location is one where we have been given GPS coordinates, but are unable to verify the accuracy of those coordinates. That said, we have some confidence that we have placed the marker near the actual location. A typical reason for being unable to verify a location is that it might be on private property or maybe historic and gone without an obvious trace.
<4>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.
<5>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 Urbandale, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<6>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Urbandale) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Urbandale. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 42.9248, Longitude: -85.6975    









 

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This page was last modified/updated: 28 Apr 2025