RoadsideThoughts
A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of Oregon >> Coos County >> Coos River >> 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 Coos River (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 Coos River. 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 Coos River ...

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 occur.

  • A typical abbreviation for Coos River: Coos Riv.
  • While the name of this community is Coos River, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Coos River may originally have been Coo's River.

    Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Coos River might be written as Coo River.

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 northeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals were in the next county to the east. 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 east 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.

Coos River is located in Coos County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Coos County: Curry & Douglas.

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

  • Coos County     (The home county of Coos River)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Coos River, with the one closest to Coos River listed first.
    • Allegany
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northeast)
    • Cooston
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
      • Cooston is located in Coos County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cooston
    • Eastside
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
    • Bunker Hill
      (5 miles [8 km] to the west)
      • Bunker Hill is located in Coos County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bunker Hill
    • Coos Bay
      (5 miles [8 km] to the west)
    • Glasgow
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northwest)
      • Glasgow is located in Coos County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Glasgow
    • Coos City ‑ Historic
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
      • Coos City is located in Coos County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Coos City
    • North Bend
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the west)
    • Empire
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the west)
      • Empire is located in Coos County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Empire
    • Saunders Lake
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the northwest)
      • Saunders Lake is located in Coos County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Saunders Lake
    • Charleston
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the west)
    • Lakeside
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the north)
    • Coquille
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
  • Douglas County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Coos River, with the one closest to Coos River listed first.
    • Winchester Bay
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the north)
    • Reedsport
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the north)
    • Umpqua City ‑ Historic
      (23 miles [37 km] to the north)
      • Umpqua City is located in Douglas County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Umpqua City
    • Scottsburg ‑ Historic
      (23 miles [37 km] to the northeast)
    • Gardiner
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the north)
    • Kellogg
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the northeast)
      • Kellogg is located in Douglas County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Kellogg

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

Cemeteries Near Coos River ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Coos River.

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 Coos River - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

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.<4>

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

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

  • Libby
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
    • Libby is located in Coos County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Libby
  • Empire
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the west)
    • Empire is located in Coos County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Empire
  • Fairview
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the south)
    • Fairview is located in Coos County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Fairview
  • Coaledo
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southwest)
    • Coaledo is located in Coos County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Coaledo
  • Coquille
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
  • Lee ‑ Historic
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
    • Lee is located in Coos County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lee
  • Dora
    (16 miles [25.7 km] to the southeast)
    • Dora is located in Coos County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Dora
  • Riverton
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southwest)
    • Riverton is located in Coos County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Riverton
  • Gravelford
    (18 miles [29 km] to the south)
    • Gravelford is located in Coos County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Gravelford
  • Randolph
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the southwest)
    • Randolph is located in Coos County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Randolph
  • Arago
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the south)
    • Arago is located in Coos County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Arago
  • Norway
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the south)
  • Continue List   (11 more) ...
    • Sitkum
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the southeast)
      • Sitkum is located in Coos County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sitkum
    • Parkersburg
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the southwest)
      • Parkersburg is located in Coos County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Parkersburg
    • Myrtle Point
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the south)

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

Newspapers Published in Coos River ...

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 39 newspapers that have been published in the area around Coos River.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Coos River, there are papers which were published within 24 miles [38.6 km]<5>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Coos River.

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 helpful 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 Coos River:

Footnotes ...

<1>It's generally believed that possessive apostrophes are removed to prevent confusion on maps where the apostrophe may be confused with a cartographic symbol. While this is generally true, it's not uncommon to find possessive apostrophes in administrative names (such as towns or counties).
<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 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.
<4>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 Coos River, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<5>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- Coos River) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.