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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
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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 East Falls Church (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 East Falls Church. 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 East Falls Church ...

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 occur.

  • A typical abbreviation for East Falls Church: E. Falls Church
  • While the name of this community is East Falls Church, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So East Falls Church may originally have been East Fall's Church.

    Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case East Falls Church might be written as East Fall Church.

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.

Cemeteries Near East Falls Church ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of East Falls Church.

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 East Falls Church - one of the links might be able to help.

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from East Falls Church, with the one closest to East Falls Church 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.<3>

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

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

  • Baileys Crossroads
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the southeast)
  • Lewinsville
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Lewinsville is located in Fairfax County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lewinsville
  • Dunn Loring
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
  • Merrifield
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
  • Annandale
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southwest)
  • Lincolnia
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the south)
    • Lincolnia is located in Fairfax County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lincolnia
  • Langley
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the north)
    • Langley is located in Fairfax County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Langley
  • Ash Grove
    (5 miles [8 km] to the northwest)
    • Ash Grove is located in Fairfax County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ash Grove
  • Ravensworth
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southwest)
    • Ravensworth is located in Fairfax County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ravensworth
  • Springfield
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the south)
  • Cabin John
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)
  • Vienna
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the west)
  • Continue List   (21 more) ...
    • Franconia
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the south)
    • Cropley
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northwest)
      • Cropley is located in Montgomery County (MD)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cropley
    • Bethesda
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northeast)

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of East Falls Church ...

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 15 newspapers that have been published in the area around East Falls Church.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of East Falls Church. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of East Falls Church and those printed in the larger area surrounding East Falls Church.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 3 miles [4.8 km]<5> of East Falls Church.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we start with 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 East Falls Church:

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>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>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 East Falls Church, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<4>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<5>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- East Falls Church) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.