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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 Niles Valley (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 Niles Valley. 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 Niles Valley ...

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.

  • A typical abbreviation for Niles Valley: Niles Vly. (or less commonly used: Niles Vally. or Niles Vlly.)
  • While the name of this community is Niles Valley, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Niles Valley may originally have been Nile's Valley.

    Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Niles Valley might be written as Nile Valley.

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 and doctors 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.

Niles Valley is located in Tioga County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Tioga County: Chemung (NY), Steuben (NY), Bradford, Lycoming & Potter.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Niles Valley ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Niles Valley.

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Niles Valley, with the one closest to Niles Valley 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.<7>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Niles Valley had a population of 250 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service.

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

  • Middlebury Center
    (Less than 2 miles to the northeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Middlebury Center have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Middlebury Center
    • Middlebury Center is located in Tioga County
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Middlebury Center <3>
  • Keeneyville
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the north)
  • Stokesdale
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the south)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Stokesdale have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Stokesdale
    • Stokesdale is located in Tioga County
  • Crooked Creek
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the northeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Crooked Creek have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Crooked Creek
    • Crooked Creek is located in Tioga County
  • Charleston
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southeast)
  • Wellsboro
    (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
  • Marsh Creek
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southwest)
  • Mardin
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the east)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Mardin have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Mardin
    • Mardin is located in Tioga County
  • Hammond
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northeast)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for Hammond. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<2>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Hammond
    • Hammond is located in Tioga County
    • Google driving directions:
    • From your current location to Hammond
    • From Niles Valley to Hammond
  • Elbridge
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Elbridge have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Elbridge
    • Elbridge is located in Tioga County
  • Little Marsh
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Little Marsh have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Little Marsh
    • Little Marsh is located in Tioga County
  • Asaph
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for Asaph. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<2>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Asaph
    • Asaph is located in Tioga County
    • Google driving directions:
    • From your current location to Asaph
    • From Niles Valley to Asaph
  • Continue List   (17 more) ...
    • Farmington Hill
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the north)
    • Balsam
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the south)
      • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for Balsam. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<2>
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Balsam
      • Balsam is located in Tioga County
      • Google driving directions:
      • From your current location to Balsam
      • From Niles Valley to Balsam
    • Roundtop
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the south)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Roundtop have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Roundtop
      • Roundtop is located in Tioga County

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

Newspapers Published in Niles Valley ...

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 80 newspapers that have been published in the area around Niles Valley.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Niles Valley, there are papers which were published within 21 miles [33.8 km]<6>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Niles Valley.

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 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 Niles Valley:

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

The official website for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: https://www.pa.gov/

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>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>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<4>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.
<5>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.
<6>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Niles Valley) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Niles Valley. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 41.8253, Longitude: -77.2880       In this case, the coordinates for Niles Valley have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<7>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 Niles Valley, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 29 Apr 2025