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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of South Dakota >> Perkins County >> Chance >> 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 Chance (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 Chance. 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 southwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals were in the next county to the west. 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 west 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.

Chance is located in Perkins County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Perkins County: Adams (ND), Butte, Corson, Harding, Meade & Ziebach.

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

  • Perkins County     (The home county of Chance)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Chance, with the one closest to Chance listed first.
    • Meadow
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the north)
    • Bison
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the northwest)
    • Usta
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the southeast)
      • Usta is located in Perkins County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Usta
      • Estimated population in 2014: 22 people
    • Date
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the west)
      • Date is located in Perkins County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Date
    • Shadehill
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the north)
    • Summerville
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the north)
      • Summerville is located in Perkins County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Summerville
      • Estimated population in 2014: 2,118 people
    • Prairie City
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the west)
    • Strool
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the west)
      • Strool is located in Perkins County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Strool
      • Estimated population in 2014: 52 people
  • Meade County
    • Faith
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the southeast)
  • Ziebach County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Chance, with the one closest to Chance listed first.
    • Glad Valley
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the east)
    • Iron Lightning
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the southeast)
      • Iron Lightning is located in Ziebach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Iron Lightning
      • Estimated population in 2014: 412 people

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

Cemeteries Near Chance ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Chance.

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 Chance - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

  • Chance Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the northeast)
  • Meadow Gallaway Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Meadow Gallaway Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Meadow Gallaway Cemetery is located less than 2 miles<3> to the south of Meadow.
    • The Meadow Gallaway Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Gallaway Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #97234 <2>
  • Bison Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the northwest)
  • Date Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the west)
  • Sein Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the north)
  • Norwegian Cemetery
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the north)
  • Pleasant Valley Cemetery
    (22 miles [35.4 km] to the northwest)
  • Iron Lightning Cemetery
    (26 miles [41.8 km] to the southeast)
  • St. Joseph Cemetery
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the south)
  • Fredlund Cemetery
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)
  • Faith Cemetery
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the southeast)

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Chance ...

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 13 newspapers that have been published in the area around Chance.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Chance. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Chance and those printed in the larger area surrounding Chance.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 29 miles [46.7 km]<3> of Chance.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first turn to 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 Chance:

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>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>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' (or point-to-point) distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Chance) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.