Gazetteer acts as road map to ancestors

by Lloyd DeWitt Bockstruck
reprinted from 7 September 1991 from “Family Tree” columns, The Dallas Morning News,1991-1996, page 16

Following one’s ancestors across the country or around the globe often causes a genealogist to seek out maps and gazetteers. If your ancestors had been standing on the east bank of the Trinity River in 1844 with John Neeley Bryan, do you know what county of the Republic of Texas it would have been? If your Jewish ancestors were still in Europe in Transcarpathian Ruthenia in 1844, do you know what country that would be today? Until 1846, the part of Dallas County on the east bank of the Trinity River was included in Nacogdoches County, Texas. Transcarpathian Ruthenia is a part of Czechoslovakia today, but before World War I, it was within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

If you seek to extend a pedigree, be alert to the geographical clues found in the records. The death certificate giving the place of birth of a deceased ancestor as “Dk” has misled more than one genealogist to the Black Hills of the Dakotas. Actually, “Dk” represents “don’t know.” Others have pursued an ancestor listed on the 1880 census with his place of birth as “FR” across the Atlantic to France. In fact, the individual took great pride in being a native of the proposed state of Franklin, which never made it into the Union. The Texan who in 1860 reported her state of nativity as “IA” means Indiana rather than Iowa.

The Omni Gazetteer of the United States of America is one of the latest attempts to make more than 1,500,000 place names in this country more accessible. Billed as eight times larger than any other comparable reference book, this 11-volume set is certainly comprehensive, but not necessarily exhaustive. It is arranged in nine regional volumes arranged into states with a one-volume index and another volume of appendices listing such categories as Indian reservations and historic places on the National Register. Volume 5 covers Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Not only are towns, cities, and villages included, but also bays, capes, valleys, hills, churches, cemeteries, battlefields, dams, and bridges. The entries are arranged alphabetically. Each entry has the name of the place, the type of place (e.g. stream, school, cemetery), the county, and the latitude and longitude.

The genealogist can benefit enormously by consulting this gazetteer. In addition to locating obscure geographical features, one can also track the migrations of families across the continent as they bestowed their names upon towns, cemeteries, swamps, and valleys. Within Dallas County, the town of Sachse and the former locality of Elam, both named for early families, can be identified. Absent, however, is any entry to the extinct community of Cement City. But Oak Cliff is included even though it ceased to be a separate entity in 1904. The set may be purchased from Omnigraphics Inc., for $2,000.