Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

So far, we found very little information about Pleasant Valley. The little that we've found leads us believe that the community is historic.<1>

We've added Pleasant Valley to our Gazetteer with the hope that we can develop more information. If you can help us with Pleasant Valley, please Contact Us.

---

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 Pleasant Valley (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 Pleasant Valley. 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 Pleasant Valley ...

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.

Although we can't give a definitive list, hopefully the following will give you a feel for the variations that might have occurred.

For example, a typical abbreviation for Pleasant Valley: Pleasant Vly. (or less commonly used: Pleasant Vally. or Pleasant Vlly.)

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.

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 hospitals and 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.

Although our information shows that the community of Pleasant Valley is historic, it would have been located within present day Chouteau County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Chouteau County: Blaine, Cascade, Fergus, Hill, Judith Basin, Liberty, Pondera & Teton.

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

• Chouteau County     (The home county of Pleasant Valley)
  • The following are listed by their distance from Pleasant Valley, with the one closest to Pleasant Valley listed first.
  • Loma
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the east)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Loma
    • Loma is located in Chouteau County
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Loma <2>
  • Fort Benton
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the south)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Fort Benton have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Fort Benton
    • Fort Benton is located in Chouteau County
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,442 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Fort Benton <2>
  • Carter
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Carter have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Carter
    • Carter is located in Chouteau County
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Carter <2>
  • Virgelle
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the east)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Virgelle
    • Virgelle is located in Chouteau County
  • Floweree
    (22 miles [35.4 km] to the southwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Floweree
    • Floweree is located in Chouteau County
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Floweree <2>
  • Big Sag
    (24 miles [38.6 km] to the south)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Big Sag
    • Big Sag is located in Chouteau County
  • Highwood
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the south)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Highwood
    • Highwood is located in Chouteau County
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Highwood <2>
  • Big Sandy
    (30 miles [48.3 km] to the northeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Big Sandy
    • Big Sandy is located in Chouteau County
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 566 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Big Sandy <2>
  • Geraldine
    (30 miles [48.3 km] to the southeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Geraldine have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Geraldine
    • Geraldine is located in Chouteau County
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 251 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Geraldine <2>

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

Newspapers Published in Pleasant Valley ...

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 Pleasant Valley.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Pleasant Valley, there are papers which were published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Pleasant Valley.

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 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 Pleasant Valley:

• Websites specific to Montana
  • Jump to Cyndi's List
  • Jump to Family Search
  • Jump to Genealogy Trails
  • Website for the Montana Historical Society

• Pages specific to Chouteau County
  • Jump to Cyndi's List
  • Jump to Family Search
  • Jump to Genealogy Trails

• Genealogy information for nearby counties

• Cemetery Information and Directories for Montana
  • Cemetery Junction: Cemeteries of Montana
  • Cyndi's List
  • Cemeteries of Montana
  • Cemeteries of Chouteau County
  • FamilySearch.org: Cemeteries of Montana
  • Find-A-Grave: Home Page
  • Interment.net
  • Cemeteries of Montana

Cemeteries Near Pleasant Valley ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Pleasant Valley.

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.

If you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our selection of Genealogy Websites (see below).

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

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

• Riverside Cemetery
  (7 miles [11.3 km] to the south)
  • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Riverside Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Riverside Cemetery
• Carter Cemetery
  (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southwest)
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Carter Cemetery
• Twin Hills Colony Cemetery
  (18 miles [29 km] to the west)
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Twin Hills Colony Cemetery
• Wolfe Cemetery
  (20 miles [32.2 km] to the northwest)
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Wolfe Cemetery
  • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2341515 <5>
• Sample Flat Cemetery
  (20 miles [32.2 km] to the west)
  • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Sample Flat Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Sample Flat Cemetery
• Montague Cemetery
  (21 miles [33.8 km] to the southeast)
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Montague Cemetery
• Kenilworth Cemetery
  (22 miles [35.4 km] to the northeast)
  • To give a relative sense of its location, the Kenilworth Cemetery is located 14 miles [22.5 km]<4> to the east of Big Sandy.
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Kenilworth Cemetery
  • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #20946 <5>
• Riverview Colony Cemetery
  (22 miles [35.4 km] to the northwest)
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Riverview Colony Cemetery
• Clear Lake Cemetery
  (23 miles [37 km] to the southeast)
  • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Clear Lake Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Clear Lake Cemetery
• Continue List   (6 more) ...
  • Erickson Cemetery
    (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Erickson Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #20862 <5>
  • Upper Shonkin Cemetery
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the south)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Upper Shonkin Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Upper Shonkin Cemetery

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.

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

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

• Fort Benton
  (8 miles [12.9 km] to the south)
  • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Fort Benton have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Fort Benton
  • Fort Benton is located in Chouteau County
  • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,442 people
  • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Fort Benton <2>
• Tunis
  (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southwest)
  • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Tunis have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Tunis
  • Tunis is located in Chouteau County
• Floweree
  (22 miles [35.4 km] to the southwest)
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Floweree
  • Floweree is located in Chouteau County
  • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Floweree <2>
• Highwood
  (25 miles [40.2 km] to the south)
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Highwood
  • Highwood is located in Chouteau County
  • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Highwood <2>
• Verona
  (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northeast)
  • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Verona have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Verona
  • Verona is located in Chouteau County
• Portage
  (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southwest)
  • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Portage have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Portage
  • Portage is located in Cascade County

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

Off-the-Road Links ...

The official website for Chouteau County: www.co.chouteau.mt.us/

The official website for State of Montana: https://mt.gov/