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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
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The Commemorative Quarter for Florida





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 Stock 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 Stock 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 Stock 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.

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

For example, a typical abbreviation for Stock Island: Stock 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.

Stock Island is located in Monroe County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Monroe County: Collier & Miami-Dade.

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

  • Monroe County     (The home county of Stock Island)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Stock Island, with the one closest to Stock Island listed first.
    • Key West
      (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
    • Big Coppitt Key
      (5 miles [8 km] to the northeast)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Big Coppitt Key have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Big Coppitt Key
      • Big Coppitt Key is located in Monroe County
    • Sugar Loaf Key
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the northeast)
    • Sugarloaf Shores
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the northeast)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Sugarloaf Shores have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sugarloaf Shores
      • Sugarloaf Shores is located in Monroe County
    • Cudjoe Key
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the northeast)
    • Summerland Key
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the east)
    • Ramrod Key
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the east)
    • Little Torch Key
      (23 miles [37 km] to the east)
    • Big Pine Key
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the east)

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

Newspapers Published in Stock 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 51 newspapers that have been published in the area around Stock Island.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Stock Island, there are papers which were published within 3 miles [4.8 km]<3>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Stock 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 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 Stock Island:

Cemeteries Near Stock Island ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Stock 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.

If you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our selection of Genealogy Websites (see below).

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

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

  • Key West Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Key West Cemetery is located in Key West.
    • The Key West Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Key West City Cemetery
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Key West Cemetery
  • Southern Keys Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Southern Keys Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Southern Keys Cemetery
  • Holy Names Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for the Holy Names Cemetery. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<4>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Holy Names Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2664342 <5>
  • Southern Key Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the northeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Southern Key Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Southern Key Cemetery
  • Memorial Gardens of the Keys
    (24 miles [38.6 km] to the east)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Memorial Gardens of the Keys have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Memorial Gardens of the Keys

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.<6>

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

  • Key West
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)

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

Unfortunately, we don't know of a website for Stock Island. If you can help, please contact us through our Feedback Page.

The official website for Monroe County: www.co.monroe.fl.us/

The official website for State of Florida: www.myflorida.com/

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 location has been supplied by the Geographic Names Information System - which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). While these values should be definitive, we found that accuracy can vary and you should double-check the location if accuracy is required.
<3>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- Stock Island) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Stock Island. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 24.5671, Longitude: -81.7384       In this case, the coordinates for Stock Island have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<4>An 'estimated' location is one where we have been given GPS coordinates, but are unable to verify the accuracy of those coordinates. That said, we have some confidence that we have placed the marker near the actual location. A typical reason for being unable to verify a location is that it might be on private property or maybe historic and gone without an obvious trace.
<5>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.
<6>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 Stock Island, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.




 

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In closing, please keep in mind that we can not guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of the information on this website, so use with care. We encourage you to double-check the information that is critical to you.

If you've found an error or have additional information that you would like to share, please don't hesitate to write: Click here to contact us.

This page was last modified/updated: 07 Apr 2024