RoadsideThoughts
A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of Florida >> Dixie County >> Shired Island >> 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 Shired Island (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 Shired Island. 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 Shired Island ...

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.

For example, a typical abbreviation for Shired Island: Shired Is. (in Canada, 'Isld.' is the more common abbreviation.)

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 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 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.

Shired Island is located in Dixie 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 Dixie County: Gilchrist, Lafayette, Levy & Taylor.

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

  • Dixie County     (The home county of Shired Island)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Shired Island, with the one closest to Shired Island listed first.
    • Suwannee
      (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
    • Horseshoe Beach
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northwest)
    • Cross City
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the north)
    • Old Town
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the northeast)
    • Suwanee Old Town ‑ Historic
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the northeast)
      • Suwanee Old Town is located in Dixie County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Suwanee Old Town
    • Steward City
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the northwest)
      • Steward City is located in Dixie County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Steward City
  • Gilchrist County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Shired Island, with the one closest to Shired Island listed first.
    • Fanning Springs
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the northeast)
    • Trenton
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northeast)
  • Levy County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Shired Island, with the one closest to Shired Island listed first.
    • Manatee Road
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the northeast)
      • Manatee Road is located in Levy County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Manatee Road
    • Cedar Key
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the southeast)
    • Chiefland
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the east)
    • Andrews
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the northeast)
      • Andrews is located in Levy County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Andrews
    • Otter Creek
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the east)
    • Gulf Hammock
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the east)
  • Suwannee County
    • Suwannee
      (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
      • Suwannee is located in Suwannee County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Suwannee
  • Taylor County

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

Cemeteries Near Shired Island ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Shired Island.

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 Shired Island - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

  • Butler Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the northwest)
  • Keen Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the east)
  • Sandhill Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the north)
  • Antioch Cemetery
    (16 miles [25.7 km] to the east)
  • Long Pond Cemetery
    (16 miles [25.7 km] to the northeast)
  • Shiloh Cemetery
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southeast)
  • Mt. Olive Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the northwest)
  • Shady Grove Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the northeast)
  • Cedar Key Cemetery
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the southeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cedar Key Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Cedar Key Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located outside and to the northwest of Cedar Key.
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #1336177 <2>
  • Old Town Cemetery
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the northeast)
  • Chiefland Community Cemetery
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the east)
  • Mt. Olive Cemetery
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the east)
  • Continue List   (24 more) ...
    • Hardee Cemetery
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the east)
    • Atsena Otie Cemetery
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the southeast)
    • Galilee Cemetery
      (21 miles [33.8 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.<3>

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

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

  • Suwannee
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
    • Suwannee is located in Suwannee County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Suwannee
  • Sumner
    (18 miles [29 km] to the southeast)
    • Sumner is located in Levy County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sumner
  • Rosewood
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the southeast)
    • Rosewood is located in Levy County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rosewood
  • Cedar Key
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the southeast)
  • Chiefland
    (21 miles [33.8 km] to the east)
  • Ellzey
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the east)
    • Ellzey is located in Levy County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ellzey
  • Otter Creek
    (26 miles [41.8 km] to the east)

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

Newspapers Published in Shired Island ...

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 10 newspapers that have been published in the area around Shired Island.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Shired Island, 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 Shired Island.

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 helpful 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 Shired Island:

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 Shired Island, 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 things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Shired Island) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.