Do you know of Belle Isle ???

This page is an orphan - a placeholder until we can discover more about Belle Isle. When we encounter a name that is new to us, we add it to our Gazetteer with the hope that we'll discover more information in the future. Such is the case with Belle Isle.

Our sources for Belle Isle (see Mentions and References below) indicate that it was a community with a post office by the same name. Unfortunately our sources aren't clear about the location of Belle Isle other than they indicate that Belle Isle would be found somewhere in Onondaga County, New York.

From the Blevins / Hellbock List: The post office opened in 1827 and closed in 1905.

This entry could have originated in error. It might be that a source had a misprint, was simply wrong or we made a transcription error while referencing it. Many of the documents we reference are from the 1800s and the early 1900s, with some easier to read than others.

Part of the difficulty in identifying whether a name is a post office or a community lies with how Post Offices were named. We've prepared an article with our understanding of how post offices were named: Naming of Post Offices.

Communities Also Named Belle Isle ...

We found five communities that share the name Belle Isle.

Within New York, the name Belle Isle is unique.

Beyond New York, we know of another five communities that are located throughout in the United States and Canada. Of these five communities, four are located in the United States and one is in Canada.

Communities Elsewhere In North America ...
- Florida
  - Orange County
  - Please visit our profile page for the Florida community of Belle Isle [Orange County].
- Mississippi
  - Hancock County
  - We found mention of this community, but have little information.<1> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Mississippi community of Belle Isle [Hancock County].
- Newfoundland and Labrador
  - Please visit our profile page for the Newfoundland and Labrador community of Belle Isle.
- Oklahoma
  - Oklahoma County
  - We found mention of this community, but have little information.<1> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Oklahoma community of Belle Isle [Oklahoma County].
- Virginia
  - Chesterfield County
  - We found mention of this community, but have little information.<1> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Virginia community of Belle Isle [Chesterfield County].

Miscellaneous References and Mentions for Belle Isle ...

We've created the following list to keep track of the sources that proved useful in adding to our knowledge about Belle Isle:

Found in a comprehensive list of Post Offices that was created by Cameron Blevins and Richard Helbock.<2>

Business Atlas and Shippers' Guide (1895)
Published by Rand McNally & Co.

A note taken from the Shipper's Guide for Belle Isle - Services available: had a Post Office, no Railroad mentioned

List of Post Offices in the United States (1870)
Published by the Government Printing Office

Table of U.S. Post Offices in the United States (Jan. 1851)
Published by W. & J.C. Greer, Printers

U.S. Post Offices (Oct. 1846)
Published by John T. Towers

New York Central Railroad Time Table (July 1902)
Published by New York Central Railroad

North American Railroad Atlas - Northeast
Written by: Walker, Mike
Published by RailfanDepot, 2020
(Available from Amazon.com)

Rand McNally Map of New York (1897)
Published by Rand McNally & Co.

The FIPS database contains an entry for Belle Isle.

Referenced FIPS Records ...

FIPS Code: 36/05628 (Place Name: Belle Isle)

County: Onondaga (FIPS State/County: 36/067)

Class: U8

Identifies a populated place (in this case, Belle Isle) located wholly or substantially outside the boundaries of an incorporated place or CDP (Census Designated Place) but whose name has not been verified as authoritative by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

More Orphans in Onondaga County ...

Can you help?

As we explained above, when we encounter a name that might be a community or a post office we add it to our Gazetteer. If we have little information to go with the name, we call them Orphans. Below are Orphans that we believe to be located in Onondaga County.

Footnotes ...

<1>

If we encounter the name of what might be a community, our methodology is to add that name to our Gazetteer as a placeholder. As we find more information about that community, it will be added to our Gazetteer.

Just as a reminder: Our definition of a community is rather broad and includes those places (or areas) where several families lived and had a name which identified that place. For example, you might hear somebody say that they are going over to Bird Creek to see Pete ... Bird Creek is just a gas station and a couple of homes at the crossroads. While it might not be on the map, everybody in the area knows it by that name.

Places of interest include buildings at a crossroad, several families clustered in a hollow or maybe the location of a way station. It also includes places like mines, lumber camps, ferry crossings, etc. The community might still exist, is now gone or only existed for just a short period of time.

Also keep in mind that Belle Isle could have been on the original document by mistake, misspelled, the original/alternate name of a community that we've listed elsewhere or was placed in the wrong county. Sometimes a post office or train station would have a different name than the community where it's located, so two names might be referring to the same community - we're working to straighten it all out.

<2>

A copy of their list with background information can be found at:

https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/data-biography/