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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 Melby (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 Melby. 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 doctors and hospitals 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.

Melby is located in Douglas 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 Douglas County: Grant, Otter Tail, Pope, Stearns, Stevens & Todd.

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

  • Douglas County     (The home county of Melby)
  • Grant County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Melby, with the one closest to Melby listed first.
    • Ashby
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Erdahl
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southwest)
    • Thorsborg
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southwest)
      • Thorsborg is located in Grant County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Thorsborg
    • Barrett
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southwest)
      • Barrett is located in Grant County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Barrett
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 414 people
    • Elbow Lake
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southwest)
    • Hoffman
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the south)
    • Wendell
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the west)
    • Norcross
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the southwest)
      • Norcross is located in Grant County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Norcross
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 71 people
    • Herman
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the southwest)
  • Otter Tail County
  • Pope County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Melby, with the one closest to Melby listed first.
    • Farwell
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the south)
      • Farwell is located in Pope County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Farwell
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 52 people
    • Lowry
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the southeast)
  • Stevens County
    • Donnelly
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the southwest)
      • Donnelly is located in Stevens County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Donnelly
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 233 people
  • Traverse County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Melby, with the one closest to Melby listed first.
    • Charlesville
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the west)
    • Tintah
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the west)
  • Wilkin County
    • Nashua
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the west)
      • Nashua is located in Wilkin County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Nashua
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 66 people

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

Cemeteries Near Melby ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Melby.

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

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Melby, with the one closest to Melby listed first.

  • Christina Lake Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the east)
  • Native American Burial Grounds
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the northwest)
  • Mound Grove Memorial Park
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southeast)
  • Pelican Lake Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
  • Erdahi Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southwest)
  • Lakeside Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northwest)
  • Trinity Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the east)
  • Free Church Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northeast)
  • Grue Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)
  • Burns Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the west)
  • Bethel Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the north)
  • Oak Hill Farm Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northeast)
  • Continue List   (197 more) ...
    • Evander Cemetery
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the north)
    • Kvam Cemetery
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northwest)
    • Brandon Cemetery
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)

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.<2>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that in 1895, Melby had a post office and railroad service.

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

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

Newspapers Published in Melby ...

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 34 newspapers that have been published in the area around Melby.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Melby, there are papers which were published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<3>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Melby.

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 Melby:

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>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 Melby, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<3>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 from Point A (ie- Melby) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.