Our Genealogy HelperIntroduction ...We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:
By learning about Big Sky (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 Big Sky. 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 and hospitals 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. Big Sky is primarily located in Gallatin County. A portion of Big Sky extends into Madison County. To see how the shape of Montana's counties may have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Gallatin County: Fremont (ID), Broadwater, Jefferson, Madison, Meagher, Park, Park (WY) & Teton (WY). Below are the counties that are near Big Sky. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Big Sky:
For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Big Sky, see our County-by-County Page for Big Sky. Cemeteries Near Big Sky ...Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Big Sky. 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 Big Sky - one of the links might be able to help. If not found below, our Cemetery List for Big Sky covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order. The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Big Sky, with the one closest to Big Sky 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.<2> While we didn't find Big Sky in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Big Sky. These communities are listed based on their distance from Big Sky, with the one closest to Big Sky listed first.
We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Big Sky. See our List of 1890's Communities around Big Sky. Newspapers Published in Big Sky ...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 13 newspapers that have been published in the area around Big Sky. Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Big Sky, there are papers which were published within 27 miles [43.5 km]<3>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Big Sky. 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 Big Sky:
Footnotes ...
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