RoadsideThoughts
A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of Florida >> Martin County >> Hell Gate >> 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 Hell Gate (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 Hell Gate. 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 northeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and 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.

Hell Gate is located in Martin 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 Martin County: Glades, Okeechobee, Palm Beach & Saint Lucie.

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

  • Martin County     (The home county of Hell Gate)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Hell Gate, with the one closest to Hell Gate listed first.
    • Jupiter Island
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the north)
      • Jupiter Island is located in Martin County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Jupiter Island
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 941 people
    • Hobe Sound
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northwest)
    • Port Salerno
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the northwest)
    • Palm City
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Sewall's Point
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Stuart
      (18 miles [29 km] to the northwest)
    • Rio
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the northwest)
      • Rio is located in Martin County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rio
    • North River Shores
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the northwest)
      • North River Shores is located in Martin County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for North River Shores
    • Ocean Breeze
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the northwest)
      • Ocean Breeze is located in Martin County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ocean Breeze
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 413 people
      • Former name for Ocean Breeze:
      • Ocean Breeze Park
    • Jensen Beach
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Indiantown
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the west)
  • Palm Beach County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Hell Gate, with the one closest to Hell Gate listed first.
    • Fort Jupiter ‑ Historic
      (Less than 2 miles to the south)
      • Fort Jupiter is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Fort Jupiter
    • Tequesta
      (Less than 2 miles to the southwest)
    • Jupiter Inlet Beach Colony
      (2 miles [3.2 km] to the south)
    • Jupiter Inlet Colony
      (2 miles [3.2 km] to the south)
      • Jupiter Inlet Colony is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Jupiter Inlet Colony
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 451 people
    • Jupiter
      (2 miles [3.2 km] to the south)
      • Jupiter is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Jupiter
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 65,834 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Jupiter <1>
    • Plumoses City ‑ Historic
      (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southwest)
      • Plumoses City is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Plumoses City
    • Limestone Creek
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southwest)
      • Limestone Creek is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Limestone Creek
    • Juno Beach
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the south)
    • Rood ‑ Historic
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the west)
      • Rood is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rood
    • Juno Ridge
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the south)
      • Juno Ridge is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Juno Ridge
    • Palm Beach Gardens
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the south)
    • North Palm Beach
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the south)
  • Saint Lucie County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Hell Gate, with the one closest to Hell Gate listed first.
    • Hutchinson Island South
      (23 miles [37 km] to the north)
    • Port Saint Lucie
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Indian River Estates
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the northwest)
      • Indian River Estates is located in Saint Lucie County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Indian River Estates

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

Cemeteries Near Hell Gate ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Hell Gate.

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 Hell Gate - one of the links might be able to help.

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Hell Gate, with the one closest to Hell Gate 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>

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

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

  • Jupiter
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the south)
    • Jupiter is located in Palm Beach County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Jupiter
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 65,834 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Jupiter <1>
  • Palm Beach
    (18 miles [29 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 Hell Gate. See our List of 1890's Communities around Hell Gate.

Newspapers Published in Hell Gate ...

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 43 newspapers that have been published in the area around Hell Gate.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Hell Gate, there are papers which were published within 27 miles [43.5 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Hell Gate.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first turn to 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 Hell Gate:

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>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.
<3>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 Hell Gate, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<4>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 from Point A (ie- Hell Gate) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.