RoadsideThoughts
A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of Arkansas >> Van Buren County >> Clinton >> 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 Clinton (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 Clinton. 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 Clinton ...

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.

In past government published Postal Guides, Clinton was referred to as Clinton Courthouse.

You might be interested in other communities that are also named Clinton. More information can be found on our Tidbits & Trivia Page for Clinton.

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.

For more information about how community names might have been affected by the Board of Geographic Names (BGN), see our page about Placename Rules.

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 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.

Clinton is located in Van Buren County and is the County Seat.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Van Buren County: Cleburne, Conway, Faulkner, Searcy & Stone.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Clinton ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Clinton.

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

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Clinton, with the one closest to Clinton listed first.

  • Johnson Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the southeast)
  • Bradley Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the southwest)
  • Hunter - Hill Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the south)
  • Pee Dee Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the east)
  • Evans Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the northwest)
  • Mountain View Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the north)
  • Bluffton Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the northwest)
  • Crowell Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the west)
  • Holly Mtn. Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the north)
  • Gardner Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the west)
  • Foster Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southwest)
  • Quattlebaum Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the south)
  • Continue List   (226 more) ...
    • Eglantine Cemetery
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the east)
    • Settlement Cemetery
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the northeast)
    • Bradford Cemetery
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)

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 Clinton had a population of 176 people in 1895 with a post office and no railroad service. In 2020, Clinton had a population of 2,506 people.

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

  • Choctaw
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the south)
    • Choctaw is located in Van Buren County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Choctaw
  • Eglantine
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the east)
  • Settlement ‑ Historic
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the northeast)
    • Settlement is located in Van Buren County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Settlement
  • Scotland
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southwest)
  • Bee Branch
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the south)
    • Bee Branch is located in Van Buren County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bee Branch
  • Morganton
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southeast)
  • Claude
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southwest)
    • Claude is located in Van Buren County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Claude
  • Dennard
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the north)
  • Copeland
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the northwest)
  • Edge ‑ Historic
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southwest)
    • Edge is located in Van Buren County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Edge
  • Chalk ‑ Historic
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
    • Chalk is located in Van Buren County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Chalk
  • Alread
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the west)
  • Continue List   (16 more) ...
    • Oak Flat ‑ Historic
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the northwest)
      • Oak Flat is located in Van Buren County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Oak Flat
    • Latham
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the west)
      • Latham is located in Van Buren County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Latham
    • Rushing
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the northeast)
      • Rushing is located in Stone County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rushing

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Clinton ...

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 12 newspapers that have been published in the area around Clinton.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Clinton. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Clinton and those printed in the larger area surrounding Clinton.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 19 miles [30.6 km]<3> of Clinton.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first visit 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 Clinton:

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>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 Clinton, 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- Clinton) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.