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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of North Dakota >> Hettinger County >> Watrous >> 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 Watrous (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 Watrous. 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 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.

Watrous is located in Hettinger 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 Hettinger County: Adams, Grant, Slope & Stark.

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

  • Hettinger County     (The home county of Watrous)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Watrous, with the one closest to Watrous listed first.
    • Mott
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northwest)
      • Mott is located in Hettinger County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Mott
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 714 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Mott <1>
    • Regent
      (18 miles [29 km] to the west)
  • Adams County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Watrous, with the one closest to Watrous listed first.
    • Haynes
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southwest)
      • Haynes is located in Adams County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Haynes
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 24 people
    • Hettinger
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the southwest)
  • Grant County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Watrous, with the one closest to Watrous listed first.
    • New Leipzig
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
    • Elgin
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the east)
    • Leith
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the east)
      • Leith is located in Grant County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Leith
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 16 people
    • Johnson Ford ‑ Historic
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northeast)
      • Johnson Ford is located in Grant County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Johnson Ford
    • Carson
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the east)
  • Stark County
  • Perkins County (SD)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Watrous, with the one closest to Watrous listed first.
    • Lemmon
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the south)
      • Lemmon is located in Perkins County (SD)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lemmon
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,160 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Lemmon <1>
    • White Butte
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the south)
      • White Butte is located in Perkins County (SD)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for White Butte
      • Estimated population in 2014: 19 people

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

Cemeteries Near Watrous ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Watrous.

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

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

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

  • Bethany Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the south)
  • Burt Hope Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the northeast)
  • Sunny Slope Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northwest)
  • Odessa Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the east)
  • Sacred Heart Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
  • Ebenezer Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the northeast)
  • Pilgerheim Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southeast)
  • Long Butte Cemetery
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the south)
  • Fleak Cemetery
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the east)
  • Congregation Cemetery
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the east)
  • Finnish Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
  • Immanuel Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
  • Continue List   (44 more) ...
    • St. Johns Cemetery
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
    • St. Johns Cemetery
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
    • Philadelphia Cemetery
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the northeast)

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

Newspapers Published in Watrous ...

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 24 newspapers that have been published in the area around Watrous.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Watrous, there are papers which were published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<3>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Watrous.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first turn to 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 Watrous:

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