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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 Waits Junction (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 Waits Junction. 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 Waits Junction ...

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.

  • A typical abbreviation for Waits Junction: Waits Jct. (or less commonly used: Waits Jctn.)
  • While the name of this community is Waits Junction, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Waits Junction may originally have been Wait's Junction.

    Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Waits Junction might be written as Wait Junction.

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 northwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors were in the next county to the west. 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 west 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.

Waits Junction is located in Lake 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 Lake County: Marion, Orange, Osceola, Polk, Seminole, Sumter & Volusia.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Waits Junction ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Waits Junction.

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 Waits Junction covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

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

  • Montverde Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the northeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Montverde Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Montverde Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Williams Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Williams Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Williams Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Minneola Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Minneola Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Minneola Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Oak Hill Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
  • Liberty Baptist Church Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
  • Winter Garden Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Winter Garden Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Winter Garden Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • West Orange Memorial Park
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the east)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the West Orange Memorial Park
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the West Orange Memorial Park have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Astatula Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the north)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Astatula Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Astatula Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Ocoee Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Ocoee Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Ocoee Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • West Orange Memorial Gardens
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the West Orange Memorial Gardens
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the West Orange Memorial Gardens have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Edgewood Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Edgewood Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Edgewood Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Greenwood Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Greenwood Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Greenwood Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Continue List   (86 more) ...
    • Taylor Memorial Cemetery
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the northwest)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Taylor Memorial Cemetery
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Taylor Memorial Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Dukes Cemetery
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the west)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Dukes Cemetery
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Dukes Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Woodlawn Memorial Park
      (11 miles [17.7 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.<7>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that in 1895, Waits Junction had railroad service and no post office.

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

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

Newspapers Published in Waits Junction ...

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 71 newspapers that have been published in the area around Waits Junction.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Waits Junction, there are papers which were published within 22 miles [35.4 km]<5>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Waits Junction.

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 Waits Junction:

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

The official website for Lake County: www.lakegovernment.com/

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

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 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.
<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>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- Waits Junction) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Waits Junction. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 28.5709, Longitude: -81.6882       In this case, the coordinates for Waits Junction have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<6>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.
<7>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 Waits Junction, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 28 Mar 2025