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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 Fort Myers Villas (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 Fort Myers Villas. 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 Fort Myers Villas ...

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.

Although we can't give a definitive list, hopefully the following will give you a feel for the variations that might occur.

  • A typical abbreviation for Fort Myers Villas: Ft. Myers Villas
  • While the name of this community is Fort Myers Villas, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Fort Myers Villas may originally have been Fort Myer's Villas.

    Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Fort Myers Villas might be written as Fort Myer Villas.

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.

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 southeast 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 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 east 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.

Fort Myers Villas is located in Lee County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Lee County: Charlotte, Collier, Glades & Hendry.

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

  • Lee County     (The home county of Fort Myers Villas)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Fort Myers Villas, with the one closest to Fort Myers Villas listed first.
    • Villas
      (Less than 2 miles to the south)
      • Villas is located in Lee County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Villas
    • Page Park
      (Less than 2 miles to the north)
      • Page Park is located in Lee County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Page Park
    • Pine Manor
      (Less than 2 miles to the northwest)
      • Pine Manor is located in Lee County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Pine Manor
    • Whiskey Creek
      (Less than 2 miles to the northwest)
      • Whiskey Creek is located in Lee County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Whiskey Creek
    • Cypress Lake
      (2 miles [3.2 km] to the southwest)
      • Cypress Lake is located in Lee County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cypress Lake
    • Biggar
      (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southwest)
    • McGregor
      (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
      • McGregor is located in Lee County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for McGregor
    • Forest Island Park
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the south)
      • Forest Island Park is located in Lee County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Forest Island Park
    • East Dunbar
      (5 miles [8 km] to the north)
      • East Dunbar is located in Lee County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for East Dunbar
    • Fort Myers
      (5 miles [8 km] to the north)
    • Harlem Heights
      (5 miles [8 km] to the southwest)
      • Harlem Heights is located in Lee County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Harlem Heights
    • Cape Coral
      (5 miles [8 km] to the west)
    • Iona
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southwest)
      • Iona is located in Lee County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Iona
  • Charlotte County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Fort Myers Villas, with the one closest to Fort Myers Villas listed first.
    • Charlotte Park
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the northwest)
      • Charlotte Park is located in Charlotte County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Charlotte Park
    • Punta Gorda
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northwest)
    • Cleveland
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the north)
      • Cleveland is located in Charlotte County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cleveland
    • Solana
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the north)
      • Solana is located in Charlotte County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Solana
    • Fishermens Village
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)
      • Fishermens Village is located in Charlotte County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Fishermens Village
    • Harbor View
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the north)
      • Harbor View is located in Charlotte County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Harbor View
    • Harbour Heights
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the north)
      • Harbour Heights is located in Charlotte County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Harbour Heights
    • Charlotte Harbor
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the northwest)
  • Collier County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Fort Myers Villas, with the one closest to Fort Myers Villas listed first.
    • Barefoot Beach
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the south)
      • Barefoot Beach is located in Collier County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Barefoot Beach
    • Naples Park
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the south)
    • Vanderbilt Beach
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the south)
    • Pelican Bay
      (23 miles [37 km] to the south)
    • Pine Ridge
      (23 miles [37 km] to the south)
      • Pine Ridge is located in Collier County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Pine Ridge
    • North Naples
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the south)
      • North Naples is located in Collier County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for North Naples
    • Vineyards
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the southeast)
      • Vineyards is located in Collier County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Vineyards
    • Orangetree
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the southeast)
      • Orangetree is located in Collier County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Orangetree
    • Golden Gate
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southeast)
    • Immokalee
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the east)
    • East Naples
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the south)
      • East Naples is located in Collier County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for East Naples
    • Naples
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the south)
    • Ave Maria
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the southeast)
  • Hendry County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Fort Myers Villas, with the one closest to Fort Myers Villas listed first.
    • Felda
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the east)
    • La Belle
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northeast)
    • Sears ‑ Historic
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the east)
      • Sears is located in Hendry County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sears

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

Cemeteries Near Fort Myers Villas ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Fort Myers Villas.

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 Fort Myers Villas - one of the links might be able to help.

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Fort Myers Villas, with the one closest to Fort Myers Villas 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.<4>

While we didn't find Fort Myers Villas in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Fort Myers Villas.

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

  • Punta Rassa
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southwest)
    • Punta Rassa is located in Lee County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Punta Rassa
  • Buckingham
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the northeast)
    • Buckingham is located in Lee County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Buckingham
  • Sanibel
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southwest)
  • Saint James City
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the west)
  • Alva
    (18 miles [29 km] to the northeast)
  • Punta Gorda
    (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northwest)
  • Cleveland
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the north)
    • Cleveland is located in Charlotte County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cleveland
  • Naples
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the south)

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

Newspapers Published in Fort Myers Villas ...

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 51 newspapers that have been published in the area around Fort Myers Villas.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Fort Myers Villas, there are papers which were published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<5>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Fort Myers Villas.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we begin 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 Fort Myers Villas:

Footnotes ...

<1>It's generally believed that possessive apostrophes are removed to prevent confusion on maps where the apostrophe may be confused with a cartographic symbol. While this is generally true, it's not uncommon to find possessive apostrophes in administrative names (such as towns or counties).
<2>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<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 Fort Myers Villas, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<5>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Fort Myers Villas) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.