RoadsideThoughts
A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
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Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

Although we found mention of Murdock during our research, we have little information about it.<1> Given the context of how Murdock was mentioned, we believe that it was a community rather than a locale or some type of landmark. We have done a cursory search and if it was a community, we haven't been able to find any evidence that it still exists..

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 Murdock (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 Murdock. 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 northwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors and hospitals were in the next county to the west. 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 west 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.

Murdock is located in Beaver County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Beaver County: Lincoln (NV), Iron, Millard, Piute & Sevier.

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

  • Beaver County     (The home county of Murdock)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Murdock, with the one closest to Murdock listed first.
    • Smyths ‑ Historic
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the north)
      • Smyths is located in Beaver County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Smyths
      • Smyths has also been known as:
      • Read
      • Reed
    • Yellow Banks
      (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
      • Yellow Banks is located in Beaver County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Yellow Banks
    • Milford
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the south)
    • Blueacre
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the west)
      • Blueacre is located in Beaver County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Blueacre
    • Upton
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the south)
      • Upton is located in Beaver County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Upton
    • Beaver City ‑ Historic
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the southwest)
      • Beaver City is located in Beaver County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Beaver City
    • Shenandoah City ‑ Historic
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the southwest)
      • Shenandoah City is located in Beaver County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Shenandoah City
      • Shenandoah City has also been known as:
      • North Camp
      • North Star
      • Star City
    • Bradshaw ‑ Historic
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
      • Bradshaw is located in Beaver County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bradshaw
      • Bradshaw has also been known as:
      • Bradshaw City
      • Cave Mine Camp
      • Cave Mine
    • Cook Corner
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
      • Cook Corner is located in Beaver County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cook Corner
    • Arago City ‑ Historic
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the southwest)
      • Arago City is located in Beaver County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Arago City
      • Arago City has also been known as:
      • South Camp
    • Shauntie ‑ Historic
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the southwest)
      • Shauntie is located in Beaver County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Shauntie
      • Shauntie has also been known as:
      • Moscow
      • Shaunty Springs
      • Shaunty
      • Shawnee
    • Frisco ‑ Historic
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the west)
      • Frisco is located in Beaver County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Frisco
  • Millard County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Murdock, with the one closest to Murdock listed first.
    • Black Rock ‑ Historic
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the north)
      • Black Rock is located in Millard County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Black Rock
    • Cove Fort ‑ Historic
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the east)
      • Cove Fort is located in Millard County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cove Fort
      • Cove Fort has also been known as:
      • Charles Willden's Fort

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

Cemeteries Near Murdock ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Murdock.

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

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Murdock, with the one closest to Murdock 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.<5>

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

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

  • Milford
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the south)
  • Black Rock ‑ Historic
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the north)
    • Black Rock is located in Millard County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Black Rock
  • Frisco ‑ Historic
    (15 miles [24.1 km] to the west)
    • Frisco is located in Beaver County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Frisco
  • Adamsville
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the southeast)
    • Adamsville is located in Beaver County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Adamsville
    • Former names for Adamsville:
    • Beaver Iron Works
    • Wales
  • Minersville
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the south)
  • Greenville
    (22 miles [35.4 km] to the southeast)
    • Greenville is located in Beaver County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Greenville
  • Beaver
    (24 miles [38.6 km] to the southeast)
    • Beaver is located in Beaver County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Beaver
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 3,200 people
    • Beaver has also been known as:
    • Beaver City
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Beaver <2>

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

Newspapers Published in Murdock ...

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 16 newspapers that have been published in the area around Murdock.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Murdock, there are papers which were published within 24 miles [38.6 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Murdock.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we like to start with the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These websites either 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 Murdock:

Footnotes ...

<1>If we encounter the name of what might be a community, our methodology is to add that name to our Gazetteer. For example, we might find a sentence like "He went north past Murdock and then turned east". While Murdock could be some kind of landmark, we think that it's more likely to be a community. We've added Murdock as a placeholder with the hope that we'll be able to add more information in the future.

Just as a reminder: Our definition of a community is rather broad and includes those places (or areas) where several families lived and had a name which identified that place. For example, you might hear somebody say that they are going over to Miller Creek to see Pete ... Miller Creek is just a gas station and a couple of homes at the crossroads. While it might not be on the map, everybody in the area knows it by that name.

Places of interest include buildings at a crossroad, several families clustered in a hollow or maybe the location of a way station. It also includes places like mines, lumber camps, ferry crossings, etc. The community might still exist, is now gone or only existed for just a short period of time.

Also keep in mind that Murdock could have been on the original document by mistake, misspelled, the original/alternate name of a community that we've listed elsewhere or was placed in the wrong county. Sometimes a post office or train station would have a different name than the community where it's located, so two names might be referring to the same community - we're working to straighten it all out.

Just in case there has been confusion between counties, we found that there are two Utah communities named Murdock: This one is located in Beaver County and the other is located in Davis County. For more information, see our Tidbits & Trivia Page for Murdock.
<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>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' (or point-to-point) distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Murdock) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.
<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 Murdock, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.