RoadsideThoughts
A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of New York >> Lewis County >> Port Leyden >> Genealogy HelperIndex...










Learn About
The Commemorative
Quarter for
New York

The Commemorative Quarter for New York





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 Port Leyden (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 Port Leyden. 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 Port Leyden ...

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.

Other variations include: Port Leydan and Port Leydon.

  • A typical abbreviation for Port Leyden: Prt. Leyden

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 southwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors were in the next county to the west. 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 west 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.

Port Leyden is located in Lewis County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Lewis County: Herkimer, Jefferson, Oneida, Oswego & Saint Lawrence.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Port Leyden ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Port Leyden.

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 Port Leyden covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

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

  • Calvary Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the east)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Calvary Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Calvary Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Wildwood Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the north)
  • Leyden Hill Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the southwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Leyden Hill Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Leyden Hill Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Collins Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Collins Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Collins Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Collinsville Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Collinsville Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Collinsville Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • St. Pauls Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the St. Pauls Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the St. Pauls Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Contableville Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
  • Rural Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Rural Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Rural Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • St. Marys Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
  • Turin Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Turin Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Turin Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Boonville Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the south)
  • Brantingham Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Brantingham Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Brantingham Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Continue List   (134 more) ...
    • Sands Cemetery
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Sands Cemetery
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Sands Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • St. Michaels Cemetery
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the St. Michaels Cemetery
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the St. Michaels Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Burdicks Crossing Cemetery
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the north)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Burdicks Crossing Cemetery
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Burdicks Crossing Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.

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.<5>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Port Leyden had a population of 462 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Port Leyden had a population of 646 people.

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

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Port Leyden ...

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 33 newspapers that have been published in the area around Port Leyden.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Port Leyden. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Port Leyden and those printed in the larger area surrounding Port Leyden.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 25 miles [40.2 km]<6> of Port Leyden.

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 professional and volunteer 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 Port Leyden:

Unfortunately, we don't know of a website for Port Leyden. If you can help, please contact us through our Feedback Page.

The official website for Lewis County: www.lewiscountyny.org/

The official website for State of New York: https://www.ny.gov/

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>An 'estimated' location is one where we have been given GPS coordinates, but are unable to verify the accuracy of those coordinates. That said, we have some confidence that we have placed the marker near the actual location. A typical reason for being unable to verify a location is that it might be on private property or maybe historic and gone without an obvious trace.
<3>The location has been supplied by the Geographic Names Information System - which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). While these values should be definitive, we found that accuracy can vary and you should double-check the location if accuracy is required.
<4>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.
<5>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 Port Leyden, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<6>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 from Point A (ie- Port Leyden) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Port Leyden. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 43.5827, Longitude: -75.3449    









 

Copyright 2025
All Rights Reserved

Thank you for visiting our website.

In closing, please keep in mind that we can not guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of the information on this website, so use with care. We encourage you to double-check the information that is critical to you.

If you've found an error or have additional information that you would like to share, please don't hesitate to write: Click here to contact us.

This page was last modified/updated: 29 Apr 2025