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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of South Dakota >> Sully County >> Onida >> 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 Onida (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 Onida. 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 southeast 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 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.

Onida is located in Sully County and is the County Seat.

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 Sully County: Dewey, Hughes, Hyde, Potter & Stanley.

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

  • Sully County     (The home county of Onida)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Onida, with the one closest to Onida listed first.
    • Agar
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the north)
    • Okobojo
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the west)
  • Dewey County
    • Marksville
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northwest)
      • Marksville is located in Dewey County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Marksville
      • Estimated population in 2014: 771 people
  • Hughes County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Onida, with the one closest to Onida listed first.
    • Blunt
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the south)
    • Harrold
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the southeast)
    • Canning
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the south)
      • Canning is located in Hughes County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Canning
    • Alto
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the south)
    • Rousseau
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the south)
      • Rousseau is located in Hughes County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rousseau
    • Pierre
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southwest)
    • Oahe
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southwest)
      • Oahe is located in Hughes County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Oahe
      • Estimated population in 2014: 474 people
  • Hyde County
  • Potter County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Onida, with the one closest to Onida listed first.
    • Gettysburg
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the north)
    • Forest City
      (23 miles [37 km] to the northwest)
      • Forest City is located in Potter County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Forest City
    • Lebanon
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northeast)
  • Stanley County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Onida, with the one closest to Onida listed first.
    • Fort Pierre
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southwest)
    • Verendrye Hill
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southwest)
      • Verendrye Hill is located in Stanley County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Verendrye Hill
      • Estimated population in 2014: 5 people

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

Cemeteries Near Onida ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Onida.

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

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Onida, with the one closest to Onida 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>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Onida had a population of 197 people in 1895 with a post office and no railroad service. In 2020, Onida had a population of 628 people.

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

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Onida ...

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 68 newspapers that have been published in the area around Onida.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Onida. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Onida and those printed in the larger area surrounding Onida.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 29 miles [46.7 km]<2> of Onida.

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 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 Onida:

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>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 drawn from Point A (ie- Onida) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.
<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 Onida, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.