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 Santa Rosa (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 Rosa. 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 southwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors and hospitals were in the next county to the west. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the south.
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 south 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 Rosa is located in Santa Barbara County.
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 Rosa. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Santa Rosa:
- Santa Barbara County (The home county of Santa Rosa)
- The following are listed by their distance from Santa Rosa, with the one closest to Santa Rosa listed first.
- Buellton
(5 miles [8 km] to the east)
- Solvang
(8 miles [12.9 km] to the east)
- Ballard
(9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
- Los Alamos
(9 miles [14.5 km] to the north)
- Los Olivos
(10 miles [16.1 km] to the northeast)
- Mission Hills
(10 miles [16.1 km] to the northwest)
- Mission Hills is located in Santa Barbara County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Mission Hills
- Lompoc Village
(10 miles [16.1 km] to the west)
- Lompoc Village is located in Santa Barbara County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lompoc Village
- Lompoc
(10 miles [16.1 km] to the west)
- Lompoc is located in Santa Barbara County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lompoc
- Population from the 2020 Census: 42,253 people
- Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Lompoc <1>
- Santa Ynez
(11 miles [17.7 km] to the east)
- Vandenberg Village
(12 miles [19.3 km] to the northwest)
- Vandenberg Village is located in Santa Barbara County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Vandenberg Village
- Cachuma Village
(16 miles [25.7 km] to the east)
- Cachuma Village is located in Santa Barbara County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cachuma Village
- Capitan
(16 miles [25.7 km] to the southeast)
- Capitan is located in Santa Barbara County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Capitan
For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Santa Rosa, see our County-by-County Page for Santa Rosa.
Cemeteries Near Santa Rosa ...
Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Santa Rosa.
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 Rosa - one of the links might be able to help.
If not found below, our Cemetery List for Santa Rosa covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.
The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Santa Rosa, with the one closest to Santa Rosa listed first.
- Solvang Cemetery
(7 miles [11.3 km] to the east)
- Los Alamos Cemetery
(8 miles [12.9 km] to the north)
- Mission La Purisima Concepcion Cemetery
(9 miles [14.5 km] to the northwest)
- Lompoc Evergreen Cemetery
(9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
- Oak Hill Cemetery
(10 miles [16.1 km] to the east)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Oak Hill Cemetery
- To give a relative sense of its location, the Oak Hill Cemetery is located in Ballard.
- The Oak Hill Cemetery has also been known as:
- Oak Hill Memorial Cemetery
- Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #8210 <3>
- St. Marks in the Valley Episcopal Church Memorial Garden
(10 miles [16.1 km] to the northeast)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for St. Marks in the Valley Episcopal Church Memorial Garden
- To give a relative sense of its location, the St. Marks in the Valley Episcopal Church Memorial Garden is located in Los Olivos.
- The St. Marks in the Valley Episcopal Church Memorial Garden has also been known as:
- Episcopal Church Memorial Garden
- St. Marks in the Valley Episcopal Church Cemetery
- Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2336947 <3>
- Ryon Memorial Park
(10 miles [16.1 km] to the west)
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ryon Memorial Park
- To give a relative sense of its location, the Ryon Memorial Park is located in Lompoc.
- Foxen Canyon Cemetery
(17 miles [27.4 km] to the north)
- Ontiveros Cemetery
(19 miles [30.6 km] to the north)
- Santa Maria Cemetery
(24 miles [38.6 km] to the north)
- Guadalupe Cemetery
(29 miles [46.7 km] to the northwest)
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.<4>
While we didn't find Santa Rosa in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Santa Rosa.
These communities are listed based on their distance from Santa Rosa, with the one closest to Santa Rosa listed first.
- Nojoqui
(7 miles [11.3 km] to the east)
- Nojoqui is located in Santa Barbara County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Nojoqui
- Ballard
(9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
- Los Alamos
(9 miles [14.5 km] to the north)
- Los Olivos
(10 miles [16.1 km] to the northeast)
- Lompoc
(10 miles [16.1 km] to the west)
- Lompoc is located in Santa Barbara County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lompoc
- Population from the 2020 Census: 42,253 people
- Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Lompoc <1>
- Santa Ynez
(11 miles [17.7 km] to the east)
- Sisquoc
(18 miles [29 km] to the north)
- Sisquoc is located in Santa Barbara County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sisquoc
- Garey
(19 miles [30.6 km] to the north)
- Garey is located in Santa Barbara County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Garey
- Naples ‑ Historic
(21 miles [33.8 km] to the southeast)
- Naples is located in Santa Barbara County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Naples
- Santa Maria
(25 miles [40.2 km] to the north)
- Ellwood
(25 miles [40.2 km] to the southeast)
- Ellwood is located in Santa Barbara County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ellwood
- La Patera
(27 miles [43.5 km] to the southeast)
- La Patera is located in Santa Barbara County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for La Patera
- Goleta
(28 miles [45.1 km] to the southeast)
We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Santa Rosa. See our List of 1890's Communities around Santa Rosa.
Newspapers Published in Santa Rosa ...
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 59 newspapers that have been published in the area around Santa Rosa.
Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Santa Rosa, there are papers which were published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<2>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Santa Rosa.
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 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 Santa Rosa:
- Websites specific to California
- Pages specific to Santa Barbara County
- Genealogy information for nearby counties
- Cemetery Information and Directories for California
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> | 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- Santa Rosa) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'. |
| <3> | 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. |
| <4> | 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 Santa Rosa, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy. |