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Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

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

We've added Charleston to our Gazetteer with the hope that we can develop more information. If you can help us with Charleston, 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 Charleston (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 Charleston. 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 southeast 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 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 east 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.

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

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Harper County: Clark (KS), Comanche (KS), Beaver, Ellis, Woods & Woodward.

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

  • Harper County     (The home county of Charleston)
  • Woods County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Charleston, with the one closest to Charleston listed first.
    • Haskew ‑ Historic
      (18 miles [29 km] to the southeast)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Haskew came from an uncertain source and they still need to be verified:<4>
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Haskew
      • Haskew is located in Woods County
    • Freedom
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the east)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Freedom have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Freedom
      • Freedom is located in Woods County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 284 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Freedom <2>
  • Woodward County
  • Barber County (KS)
  • Clark County (KS)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Charleston, with the one closest to Charleston listed first.
    • Sitka
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the northwest)
      • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for Sitka. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<5>
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sitka
      • Sitka is located in Clark County (KS)
      • Google driving directions:
      • From your current location to Sitka
      • From Charleston to Sitka
    • Ashland
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northwest)
  • Comanche County (KS)

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

Cemeteries Near Charleston ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Charleston.

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

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

  • Lutheran Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Lutheran Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Lutheran Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Goldenrod Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Goldenrod Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Goldenrod Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Spring Valley Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Spring Valley Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Spring Valley Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Hopewell Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Hopewell Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Hopewell Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • High Point Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
  • Lookout Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
  • Nixon Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southeast)
  • Coy Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the northeast)
  • Willow Creek Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the northwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Willow Creek Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Willow Creek Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Kibby Cemetery
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Kibby Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Kibby Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Otter Creek Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Otter Creek Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Otter Creek Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Fern Cemetery
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the south)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Fern Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Fern Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Continue List   (35 more) ...
    • Mt. Pleasant Cemetery
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the east)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Gyp Valley Cemetery
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the southwest)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Gyp Valley Cemetery
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Gyp Valley Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Rock Church Cemetery
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the south)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Rock Church Cemetery
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Rock Church 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.

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

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

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Charleston ...

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 76 newspapers that have been published in the area around Charleston.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Charleston. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Charleston and those printed in the larger area surrounding Charleston.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<7> of Charleston.

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 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 Charleston:

The official website for State of Oklahoma: https://www.ok.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>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 Charleston, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<2>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<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>If we found a location and have questions about the accuracy of our information, we will simply say that the marker is 'in the vicinity'. We are not confident about the location and the position of our marker is only a rough guide. If we have too many doubts about the location, we will not include it in our database.
<5>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.
<6>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.
<7>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a '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- Charleston) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Charleston. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 36.8559, Longitude: -99.4391    









 

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This page was last modified/updated: 29 Apr 2025