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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 Cottage Grove (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 Cottage Grove. 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 Cottage Grove ...

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 Cottage Grove: Cottage Grv.

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 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.

Cottage Grove is located in Lane County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Lane County: Benton, Deschutes, Douglas, Klamath, Lincoln & Linn.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Cottage Grove ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Cottage Grove.

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

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

  • McFarland Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the north)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the McFarland Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the McFarland Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Shields Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the southeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Shields Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Shields Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Fir Grove Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Fir Grove Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Fir Grove Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Sears Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the east)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Sears Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Sears Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Hawley Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Hawley Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Hawley Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Taylor - Lane Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the south)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Taylor - Lane Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Taylor - Lane Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Walker Union Church Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the north)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Walker Union Church Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Walker Union Church Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Broumbaugh Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Broumbaugh Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Broumbaugh Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Brumbaugh Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southeast)
  • Silk Creek Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Silk Creek Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Silk Creek Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Jackson Family Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the north)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Jackson Family Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Jackson Family Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Doolittle Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the east)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Doolittle Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Doolittle Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Continue List   (82 more) ...
    • Comstock Cemetery
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Comstock Cemetery
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Comstock Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Creswell Association Cemetery
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the north)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Creswell Association Cemetery
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Creswell Association Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Crow Family Cemetery
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the west)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Crow Family Cemetery
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Crow Family 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 in 1895, Cottage Grove had a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Cottage Grove had a population of 10,518 people.

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

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Cottage Grove ...

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 102 newspapers that have been published in the area around Cottage Grove.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Cottage Grove. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Cottage Grove and those printed in the larger area surrounding Cottage Grove.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<6> of Cottage Grove.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first visit 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 Cottage Grove:

The official website for Cottage Grove: www.cottagegrove.org/

The official website for Lane County: www.lanecounty.org/

The official website for State of Oregon: https://www.oregon.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 Cottage Grove, 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' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Cottage Grove) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Cottage Grove. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 43.7941, Longitude: -123.0579    









 

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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