Our Genealogy HelperIntroduction ...We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:
By learning about Santa Barbara (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 Santa Barbara. 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 Santa Barbara ...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, Santa Barbara was referred to as Santa Barbara Courthouse. 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 northwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and doctors 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. Santa Barbara is located in Santa Barbara County and is the County Seat. To see how the shape of California's counties may have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Santa Barbara County: Kern, San Luis Obispo & Ventura. Below are the counties that are near Santa Barbara. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Santa Barbara:
For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Santa Barbara, see our County-by-County Page for Santa Barbara. Cemeteries Near Santa Barbara ...Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Santa Barbara. 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 Santa Barbara - one of the links might be able to help. If not found below, our Cemetery List for Santa Barbara covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order. The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Santa Barbara, with the one closest to Santa Barbara 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> The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Santa Barbara had a population of 5,864 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Santa Barbara had a population of 90,254 people. These communities are listed based on their distance from Santa Barbara, with the one closest to Santa Barbara listed first.
We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Santa Barbara. See our List of 1890's Communities around Santa Barbara. Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Santa Barbara ...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 110 newspapers that have been published in the area around Santa Barbara. We have organized these newspapers into two lists:
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 Santa Barbara:
Footnotes ...
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