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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of North Dakota >> McKenzie County >> Croff >> Genealogy HelperIndex...

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 Croff (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 Croff. 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 northeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and doctors were in the next county to the east. 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 east 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.

Croff is located in McKenzie County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of McKenzie County: Richland (MT), Wibaux (MT), Billings, Dunn, Golden Valley, Mountrail & Williams.

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

  • McKenzie County     (The home county of Croff)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Croff, with the one closest to Croff listed first.
    • Schafer
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the west)
      • Schafer is located in McKenzie County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Schafer
    • Mandaree
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
    • Keene
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the north)
    • Watford City
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the west)
    • Four Bears Village
      (23 miles [37 km] to the northeast)
      • Four Bears Village is located in McKenzie County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Four Bears Village
    • Banks ‑ Historic
      (23 miles [37 km] to the northwest)
      • Banks is located in McKenzie County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Banks
    • Arnegard
      (23 miles [37 km] to the west)
    • Grassy Butte
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southwest)
    • Rawson
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the west)
      • Rawson is located in McKenzie County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rawson
  • Dunn County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Croff, with the one closest to Croff listed first.
    • Killdeer
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the south)
    • Independance ‑ Historic
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the east)
      • Independance is located in Dunn County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Independance
    • Dunn Center
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the southeast)
  • McLean County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Croff, with the one closest to Croff listed first.
    • Charging Eagle ‑ Historic
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the east)
      • Charging Eagle is located in McLean County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Charging Eagle
    • Shell Creek ‑ Historic
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the east)
      • Shell Creek is located in McLean County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Shell Creek
  • Mountrail County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Croff, with the one closest to Croff listed first.
    • Sanish
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the northeast)
      • Sanish is located in Mountrail County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sanish
    • New Town
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the northeast)
    • Van Hook
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the northeast)
      • Van Hook is located in Mountrail County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Van Hook
  • Williams County
    • Lake Jessie
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northwest)
      • Lake Jessie is located in Williams County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lake Jessie

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

Cemeteries Near Croff ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Croff.

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

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

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

  • Johnsons Corner Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the north)
  • Trinity Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the west)
  • Union Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northeast)
  • Silent City Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the north)
  • Clear Creek Lutheran Church Cemetery
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the north)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Clear Creek Lutheran Church Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Clear Creek Lutheran Church Cemetery is located outside and to the southwest of Keene.
    • The Clear Creek Lutheran Church Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Clear Creek Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2201205 <2>
  • Schafer Cemetery
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the west)
  • West Prairie Cemetery
    (15 miles [24.1 km] to the north)
  • Salem Cemetery
    (16 miles [25.7 km] to the west)
  • Redeemer Cemetery
    (16 miles [25.7 km] to the north)
  • Tepee Buttes Cemetery
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the west)
  • Good Hope Cemetery
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the north)
  • Holy Family US Scouts Cemetery
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the east)
  • Continue List   (18 more) ...

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.<3>

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

  • Oakdale
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the south)
    • Oakdale is located in Dunn County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Oakdale

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

Newspapers Published in Croff ...

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 31 newspapers that have been published in the area around Croff.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Croff, 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 Croff.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we begin 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 Croff:

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>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 Croff, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<4>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 drawn from Point A (ie- Croff) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.