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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 Worthington (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 Worthington. 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 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.

Worthington is located in Nobles County and is the County Seat.

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 Nobles County: Lyon (IA), Osceola (IA), Cottonwood, Jackson, Murray & Rock.

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

  • Nobles County     (The home county of Worthington)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Worthington, with the one closest to Worthington listed first.
    • Org
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southwest)
    • Brewster
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the northeast)
    • Reading
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the northwest)
      • Reading is located in Nobles County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Reading
    • Round Lake
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
    • Bigelow
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southwest)
      • Bigelow is located in Nobles County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bigelow
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 226 people
    • Rushmore
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the west)
      • Rushmore is located in Nobles County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rushmore
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 334 people
    • Ransom
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southwest)
    • Kinbrae
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the north)
    • Wilmont
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the northwest)
    • Dundee
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the north)
      • Dundee is located in Nobles County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Dundee
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 67 people
    • Adrian
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the west)
    • Lismore
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the northwest)
      • Lismore is located in Nobles County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lismore
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 218 people
  • Cottonwood County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Worthington, with the one closest to Worthington listed first.
    • Windom
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northeast)
      • Windom is located in Cottonwood County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Windom
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 4,403 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Windom <1>
    • Westbrook
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the north)
  • Jackson County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Worthington, with the one closest to Worthington listed first.
    • Sioux Valley
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the east)
    • Okabena
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the northeast)
    • Heron Lake
      (18 miles [29 km] to the northeast)
      • Heron Lake is located in Jackson County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Heron Lake
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 643 people
    • Lakefield
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the east)
    • Wilder
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the northeast)
    • Jackson
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the east)
  • Murray County
  • Rock County
  • Dickinson County (IA)
  • Lyon County (IA)
  • O'Brien County (IA)
  • Osceola County (IA)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Worthington, with the one closest to Worthington listed first.
    • Allendorf
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
    • Ocheyedan
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
    • Harris
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the southeast)
    • Sibley
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southwest)
      • Sibley is located in Osceola County (IA)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sibley
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 2,586 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Sibley <1>
    • Cloverdale
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the south)
    • May City
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the south)
    • Melvin
      (23 miles [37 km] to the south)
      • Melvin is located in Osceola County (IA)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Melvin
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 197 people
    • Ashton
      (23 miles [37 km] to the southwest)
      • Ashton is located in Osceola County (IA)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ashton
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 419 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Ashton <1>

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

Cemeteries Near Worthington ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Worthington.

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

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

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

  • Worthington Twp. Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the southeast)
  • St. Marys Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the east)
  • Garden of Memories
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
  • Indian Lake Baptist Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
  • Church of the Brethren Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the northwest)
  • Hersey Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northeast)
  • Trinity Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northeast)
  • Sacred Heart Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northeast)
  • Summit Lake Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northwest)
  • Sunset Rest Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the west)
  • Ransom Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southwest)
  • Round Lake Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
  • Continue List   (108 more) ...
    • Norwegian Lutheran Cemetery
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southwest)
    • Grace Cemetery
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the east)
    • Emmanuel Presbyterian Cemetery
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southwest)

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 Worthington had a population of 1,164 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Worthington had a population of 12,968 people.

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

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Worthington ...

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 115 newspapers that have been published in the area around Worthington.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Worthington. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Worthington and those printed in the larger area surrounding Worthington.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<3> of Worthington.

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 websites either 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 Worthington:

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 Worthington, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<3>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' (or point-to-point) distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Worthington) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.