RoadsideThoughts
A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of Wisconsin >> Dane County >> Morrisonville >> 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 Morrisonville (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 Morrisonville. 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 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.

Morrisonville is located in Dane County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Dane County: Columbia, Dodge, Green, Iowa, Jefferson, Rock & Sauk.

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

  • Dane County     (The home county of Morrisonville)
  • Columbia County
  • Dodge County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Morrisonville, with the one closest to Morrisonville listed first.
    • Astico
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the east)
    • Reeseville
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the east)
    • Randolph
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northeast)
      • Randolph is located in Dodge County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Randolph
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,738 people
    • Lowell
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the east)
      • Lowell is located in Dodge County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lowell
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 322 people
    • Beaver Dam
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northeast)
    • Fox Lake
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northeast)
      • Fox Lake is located in Dodge County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Fox Lake
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,440 people
  • Iowa County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Morrisonville, with the one closest to Morrisonville listed first.
    • Cassell
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the west)
    • Arena
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the west)
  • Jefferson County
  • Marquette County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Morrisonville, with the one closest to Morrisonville listed first.
    • Douglas Center
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the north)
    • Endeavor
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the north)
      • Endeavor is located in Marquette County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Endeavor
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 464 people
  • Sauk County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Morrisonville, with the one closest to Morrisonville listed first.
    • Merrimac
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the northwest)
      • Merrimac is located in Sauk County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Merrimac
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 441 people
    • Moon Valley
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the west)
    • Prairie du Sac village
      (18 miles [29 km] to the west)
    • Sauk City
      (18 miles [29 km] to the west)
      • Sauk City is located in Sauk County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sauk City
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 3,498 people
    • Baraboo
      (23 miles [37 km] to the northwest)
    • West Baraboo
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the northwest)
      • West Baraboo is located in Sauk County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for West Baraboo
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,416 people
    • Denzer
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the west)
    • Witwen
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the west)
    • North Freedom
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)
      • North Freedom is located in Sauk County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for North Freedom
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 690 people
    • Leland
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the west)

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

Cemeteries Near Morrisonville ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Morrisonville.

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

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Morrisonville, with the one closest to Morrisonville 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.<2>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Morrisonville had a population of 136 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service.

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

  • Norway Grove
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the southwest)
    • Norway Grove is located in Dane County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Norway Grove
  • DeForest
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the south)
  • Leeds
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the northeast)
    • Leeds is located in Columbia County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Leeds
  • Arlington
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the north)
  • Windsor
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the south)
  • North Leeds
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northeast)
  • Keyeser
    (5 miles [8 km] to the east)
  • Dane
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the west)
    • Dane is located in Dane County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Dane
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,134 people
  • Waunakee
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
    • Waunakee is located in Dane County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Waunakee
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 14,188 people
  • North Bristol
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the east)
  • Lowville
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the north)
    • Lowville is located in Columbia County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lowville
  • Poynette
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the north)
  • Continue List   (14 more) ...
    • Lodi
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the west)
    • Mendota
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the south)
    • Sun Prairie
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
      • Sun Prairie is located in Dane County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sun Prairie
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 35,119 people

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Morrisonville ...

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 262 newspapers that have been published in the area around Morrisonville.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Morrisonville. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Morrisonville and those printed in the larger area surrounding Morrisonville.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 25 miles [40.2 km]<3> of Morrisonville.

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 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 Morrisonville:

Footnotes ...

<1>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.
<2>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 Morrisonville, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<3>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- Morrisonville) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.