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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 Brooklyn (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 Brooklyn. 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 southeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors were in the next county to the east. 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 east 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.

Brooklyn is located in Forrest County.

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 Forrest County: Covington, Jones, Lamar, Perry & Stone.

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

  • Forrest County     (The home county of Brooklyn)
  • Covington County
  • Greene County
    • McLain
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the east)
      • McLain is located in Greene County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for McLain
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 430 people
  • Harrison County
  • Lamar County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Brooklyn, with the one closest to Brooklyn listed first.
    • Purvis
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the northwest)
    • Lumberton
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the west)
    • Wells Town
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the west)
      • Wells Town is located in Lamar County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Wells Town
    • West Hattiesburg
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the northwest)
      • West Hattiesburg is located in Lamar County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for West Hattiesburg
  • Marion County
  • Pearl River County
  • Perry County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Brooklyn, with the one closest to Brooklyn listed first.
    • New Augusta
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the northeast)
    • Wingate
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the northeast)
    • Beaumont
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the northeast)
      • Beaumont is located in Perry County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Beaumont
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 894 people
    • Richton
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northeast)
  • Stone County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Brooklyn, with the one closest to Brooklyn listed first.
    • Wiggins
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
    • Smith Town
      (18 miles [29 km] to the southwest)
      • Smith Town is located in Stone County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Smith Town
    • McHenry
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the south)

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

Cemeteries Near Brooklyn ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Brooklyn.

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

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Brooklyn, with the one closest to Brooklyn 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.<4>

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

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

  • Hattiesburg
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the north)
  • Hillsdale
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the southwest)
  • Orvisburg
    (22 miles [35.4 km] to the southwest)
    • Orvisburg is located in Pearl River County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Orvisburg
  • Leaf
    (23 miles [37 km] to the east)
    • Leaf is located in Greene County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Leaf
  • Poplarville
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the southwest)
  • Eastabuchie
    (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
    • Eastabuchie is located in Forrest County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Eastabuchie
  • Airey
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the south)
    • Airey is located in Harrison County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Airey

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

Newspapers Published in Brooklyn ...

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 37 newspapers that have been published in the area around Brooklyn.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Brooklyn, there are papers which were published within 25 miles [40.2 km]<3>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Brooklyn.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we start with 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 Brooklyn:

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>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Brooklyn) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.
<4>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 Brooklyn, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.