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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 Brandon (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 Brandon. 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.

Name Variations for Brandon ...

When searching records, keep in mind that names and their spelling can change over time. Our sources include documents like maps, railroad schedules, Travel, Express and Shipping Guides. Many of these documents date from the 1800's and it's common to find spelling differences.

In past government published Postal Guides, Brandon was referred to as Brandon Courthouse.

You might be interested in other communities that are also named Brandon. More information can be found on our Tidbits & Trivia Page for Brandon.

If you have information about these names (such as the reason for the change, date of change, the origin of the name), please Contact Us.

For more information about how community names might have been affected by the Board of Geographic Names (BGN), see our page about Placename Rules.

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 northwest 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 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 west 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.

Brandon is located in Rankin County and is the County Seat.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Rankin County: Copiah, Hinds, Madison, Scott, Simpson & Smith.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Brandon ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Brandon.

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

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

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

  • Old Brandon Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the east)
  • Brandon Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the northeast)
  • Brandon Memory Gardens
    (Less than 2 miles to the south)
  • Sandhill Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the south)
  • Pleasant Grove Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the west)
  • Greenfield Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southwest)
  • Bethel Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the south)
  • Friendship Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southeast)
  • Pilgrim Rest Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the northeast)
  • Hebron Hill Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southeast)
  • St. Hill Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the east)
  • Oakdale Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the north)
  • Continue List   (332 more) ...
    • Liberty Cemetery
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
    • Flora Hills Cemetery
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
    • Mt. Olive Cemetery
      (5 miles [8 km] to the north)

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 Brandon had a population of 835 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Brandon had a population of 24,396 people.

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

  • Greenfield
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southwest)
  • Rankin
    (5 miles [8 km] to the east)
    • Rankin is located in Rankin County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rankin
  • Pearson
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the west)
  • Monterey
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
    • Monterey is located in Rankin County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Monterey
  • Thomasville
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the south)
    • Thomasville is located in Rankin County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Thomasville
  • Fannin
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the north)
  • Dobson ‑ Historic
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southeast)
    • Dobson is located in Rankin County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Dobson
  • Jackson
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the west)
  • Lynwood ‑ Historic
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
    • Lynwood is located in Rankin County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lynwood
  • Pelahatchie
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
  • Tougaloo
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the northwest)
  • Johns
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the southeast)
    • Johns is located in Rankin County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Johns
  • Continue List   (19 more) ...

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Brandon ...

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 149 newspapers that have been published in the area around Brandon.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Brandon. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Brandon and those printed in the larger area surrounding Brandon.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 12 miles [19.3 km]<3> of Brandon.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we like to start with the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These helpful 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 Brandon:

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 Brandon, 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 things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Brandon) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.