Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

Although we found mention of Rock Lake during our research, we really don't have any information about it.<1> Given the context of how Rock Lake was mentioned, we believe that it was a community rather than a locale or some type of landmark. We have done a cursory search and if it was a community, we haven't been able to find any evidence that it still exists..

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 Rock Lake (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 Rock Lake. 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 Rock Lake ...

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.

For example, a typical abbreviation for Rock Lake: Rock Lk.

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.

Cemeteries Near Rock Lake ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Rock Lake.

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

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

Rock Lake Cemetery
(2 miles [3.2 km] to the east)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Rock Lake Cemetery
- Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2273489 <2>
Plummer Cemetery
(3 miles [4.8 km] to the south)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Plummer Cemetery
- Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for the Plummer Cemetery. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<3>
- The Plummer Cemetery has also been known as:
- Finlaysons Cemetery
- Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2403235 <2>
Mt. Zion / Sands Cemetery
(3 miles [4.8 km] to the southeast)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Mt. Zion / Sands Cemetery
- The Mt. Zion / Sands Cemetery has also been known as:
- Sands Cemetery
- Sands / Mt. Zion Cemetery
- Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2520207 <2>
Mt. Pleasant Cemetery
(4 miles [6.4 km] to the southwest)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery
Aberdeen Cemetery
(4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Aberdeen Cemetery
- Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2492440 <2>
Humphrey Maple Grove Cemetery
(5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Humphrey Maple Grove Cemetery
- The Humphrey Maple Grove Cemetery has also been known as:
- Humpheries Cemetery
- Humphery Cemetery
- Humphries Cemetery
- Maple Grove Cemetery
- Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2459686 <2>
Poplar Dale Cemetery
(5 miles [8 km] to the northeast)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Poplar Dale Cemetery
- To give a relative sense of its location, the Poplar Dale Cemetery is located 15 miles [24.1 km]<4> to the south of Bruce Mines.
- Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2535417 <2>
Bruce Mines Cemetery
(9 miles [14.5 km] to the south)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Bruce Mines Cemetery
- The Bruce Mines Cemetery has also been known as:
- Bruce Mines / Trunk Road Cemetery
- Trunk Road Cemetery
- Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2459997 <2>
Cloudslee Cemetery
(9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Cloudslee Cemetery
- To give a relative sense of its location, the Cloudslee Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located in the vicinity of Cloudslee
- Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2330249 <2>
Sylvan Valley Cemetery
(9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Sylvan Valley Cemetery
- Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2400082 <2>
Desbarats Cemetery
(10 miles [16.1 km] to the southwest)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Desbarats Cemetery
- To give a relative sense of its location, the Desbarats Cemetery is located less than 2 miles<4> to the southeast of Desbarats.
- Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2309736 <2>
Bruce Mines / Taylor Street Cemetery
(10 miles [16.1 km] to the south)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Bruce Mines / Taylor Street Cemetery
Continue List (38 more) ...
- Laird Cemetery
  (12 miles [19.3 km] to the west)
  - Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Laird Cemetery
  - Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2364578 <2>
- Mapleleaf Cemetery
  (13 miles [20.9 km] to the west)
  - Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Mapleleaf Cemetery
  - The Mapleleaf Cemetery has also been known as:
  - Maple Leaf Cemetery
  - Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2174242 <2>
- Grace United Cemetery
  (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
  - Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Grace United Cemetery
  - To give a relative sense of its location, the Grace United Cemetery is located outside and to the southwest of Hilton Beach.
  - The Grace United Cemetery has also been known as:
  - Hilton Beach United Cemetery
  - Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2422853 <2>

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

Newspapers Published in Rock Lake ...

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 17 newspapers that have been published in the area around Rock Lake.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Rock Lake, there are papers which were published within 27 miles [43.5 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Rock Lake.

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 Rock Lake:

Websites specific to Ontario
- Jump to Cyndi's List
- Jump to Family Search

Cemetery Information and Directories for Ontario
- Cemetery Junction: Cemeteries of Ontario
- Cyndi's List
- Cemeteries of Ontario
- FamilySearch.org: Cemeteries of Ontario
- Find-A-Grave: Home Page
- Interment.net
- Cemeteries of Ontario

Off-the-Road Links ...

The official website for Province of Ontario: https://www.ontario.ca/

Footnotes ...

<1>	If we encounter the name of what might be a community, our methodology is to add that name to our Gazetteer. For example, we might find a sentence like "He went north past Rock Lake and then turned east". While Rock Lake could be some kind of landmark, we think that it's more likely to be a community. We've added Rock Lake as a placeholder with the hope that we'll be able to add more information in the future. 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 Rock Lake 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 . 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. Since confusion between is common, we searched and weren't able to find another Ontario community named Rock Lake.
<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>	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.
<4>	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- Rock Lake) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Rock Lake. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 46.4525, Longitude: -83.7853