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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 Sylvan Shores (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 Sylvan Shores. 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 Sylvan Shores ...

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.

For example, a typical abbreviation for Sylvan Shores: Sylvan Shrs.

You might be interested in other communities that are also named Sylvan Shores. More information can be found on our Tidbits & Trivia Page for Sylvan Shores.

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 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.

Sylvan Shores is located in Highlands 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 Highlands County: Charlotte, DeSoto, Glades, Hardee, Okeechobee, Osceola & Polk.

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

  • Highlands County     (The home county of Sylvan Shores)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Sylvan Shores, with the one closest to Sylvan Shores listed first.
    • Lake Placid
      (Less than 2 miles to the southwest)
    • Placid Lakes
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southwest)
      • Placid Lakes is located in Highlands County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Placid Lakes
    • De Soto City
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the northwest)
      • De Soto City is located in Highlands County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for De Soto City
    • Archbold
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the south)
      • Archbold is located in Highlands County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Archbold
    • Lorida
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the northeast)
    • Sebring
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the northwest)
    • Venus
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the south)
    • Avon Park
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Alpine
      (23 miles [37 km] to the north)
      • Alpine is located in Highlands County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Alpine
  • DeSoto County
    • Calvinia ‑ Historic
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the west)
      • Calvinia is located in DeSoto County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Calvinia
  • Glades County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Sylvan Shores, with the one closest to Sylvan Shores listed first.
    • Palmdale
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the south)
    • Lakeport
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southeast)
    • Hall City
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the south)
      • Hall City is located in Glades County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Hall City
    • Buckhead Ridge
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the southeast)
      • Buckhead Ridge is located in Glades County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Buckhead Ridge
  • Hardee County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Sylvan Shores, with the one closest to Sylvan Shores listed first.
    • Crewsville
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the northwest)
      • Crewsville is located in Hardee County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Crewsville
    • Zolfo Springs
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the northwest)
  • Polk County
    • Pittsburg
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northwest)
      • Pittsburg is located in Polk County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Pittsburg

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

Cemeteries Near Sylvan Shores ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Sylvan Shores.

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 Sylvan Shores - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

  • Oak Hill Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the west)
  • Pinecrest Cemetery
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the north)
  • Whitten Cemetery
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the northwest)
  • Lakeside Cemetery
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the north)
  • Prescott Cemetery
    (15 miles [24.1 km] to the northwest)
  • Oak Creek Cemetery
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the west)
  • Lakeview Memorial Gardens
    (18 miles [29 km] to the northwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lakeview Memorial Gardens
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Lakeview Memorial Gardens is located 3 miles [4.8 km]<2> to the south of Avon Park.
  • Basinger Cemetery
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the east)
  • Bougainvillea Cemetery
    (22 miles [35.4 km] to the northwest)
  • Ft. Kissimmee Cemetery
    (22 miles [35.4 km] to the northeast)
  • Corinth Cemetery
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Corinth Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Corinth Cemetery is located 7 miles [11.3 km]<2> to the northwest of Avon Park.
    • The Corinth Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Bereah Cemetery
    • Corinth Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2242863 <3>
  • Hart Cemetery
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)
  • Joshua Creek Cemetery
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the west)

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 Sylvan Shores in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Sylvan Shores.

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

  • Crewsville
    (16 miles [25.7 km] to the northwest)
    • Crewsville is located in Hardee County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Crewsville
  • Avon Park
    (21 miles [33.8 km] to the northwest)
  • Calvinia ‑ Historic
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the west)
    • Calvinia is located in DeSoto County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Calvinia

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

Newspapers Published in Sylvan Shores ...

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 12 newspapers that have been published in the area around Sylvan Shores.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Sylvan Shores, there are papers which were published within 21 miles [33.8 km]<2>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Sylvan Shores.

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 Sylvan Shores:

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 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Sylvan Shores) 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 Sylvan Shores, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.