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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 Holt (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 Holt. 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 northeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and doctors 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.

Holt is located in Marshall County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Marshall County: Beltrami, Kittson, Pennington, Polk, Roseau, Grand Forks (ND), Pembina (ND) & Walsh (ND).

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

  • Marshall County     (The home county of Holt)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Holt, with the one closest to Holt listed first.
    • Newfolden
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northwest)
      • Newfolden is located in Marshall County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Newfolden
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 363 people
    • Middle River
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the north)
    • Viking
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southwest)
    • Strandquist
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Gatzke
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the northeast)
      • Gatzke is located in Marshall County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Gatzke
    • Espelie
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the east)
    • Englund
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the northwest)
    • Grygla
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the east)
    • Warren
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the west)
    • Argyle
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the west)
  • Kittson County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Holt, with the one closest to Holt listed first.
    • Karlstad
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the northwest)
    • Deerwood
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northwest)
      • Deerwood is located in Kittson County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Deerwood
  • Pennington County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Holt, with the one closest to Holt listed first.
    • Thief River Falls
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the south)
    • Saint Hilaire
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the south)
      • Saint Hilaire is located in Pennington County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Saint Hilaire
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 258 people
    • Goodridge
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the southeast)
      • Goodridge is located in Pennington County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Goodridge
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 126 people
    • Erie
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the southeast)
  • Polk County
  • Red Lake County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Holt, with the one closest to Holt listed first.
    • Plummer
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the south)
      • Plummer is located in Red Lake County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Plummer
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 289 people
    • Dorothy
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southwest)
    • Red Lake Falls
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the south)
  • Roseau County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Holt, with the one closest to Holt listed first.
    • Strathcona
      (18 miles [29 km] to the north)
      • Strathcona is located in Roseau County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Strathcona
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 41 people
    • Greenbush
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the north)

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

Cemeteries Near Holt ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Holt.

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 Holt - one of the links might be able to help.

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Holt, with the one closest to Holt 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 in 1895, Holt had a post office and no railroad service. In 2020, Holt had a population of 87 people.

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

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Holt ...

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 Holt.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Holt. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Holt and those printed in the larger area surrounding Holt.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 28 miles [45.1 km]<4> of Holt.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we begin with 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 Holt:

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 Holt, 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' distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Holt) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.