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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
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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 Watson (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 Watson. 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 southeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors and 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.

Watson is located in Palm Beach 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 Palm Beach County: Broward, Glades, Hendry, Martin & Okeechobee.

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

  • Palm Beach County     (The home county of Watson)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Watson, with the one closest to Watson listed first.
    • Lake Harbor
      (Less than 2 miles to the east)
    • Ritta ‑ Historic
      (2 miles [3.2 km] to the northeast)
      • Ritta is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ritta
      • Ritta has also been known as:
      • Ritta Island
    • Bean City
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the east)
      • Bean City is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bean City
    • Chosen ‑ Historic
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the east)
      • Chosen is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Chosen
    • South Bay
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the east)
    • Torry Island ‑ Historic
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the east)
      • Torry Island is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Torry Island
    • Kraemer ‑ Historic
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northeast)
      • Kraemer is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Kraemer
    • Belle Glade Camp
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
      • Belle Glade Camp is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Belle Glade Camp
    • Belle Glade
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
    • Okeelanta ‑ Historic
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
      • Okeelanta is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Okeelanta
    • Fremd Village - Padgett Island
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the northeast)
    • Fremd Village
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the northeast)
      • Fremd Village is located in Palm Beach County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Fremd Village
    • Pahokee
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the northeast)
  • Glades County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Watson, with the one closest to Watson listed first.
    • Moore Haven
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the northwest)
    • Lakeport
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Buckhead Ridge
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the north)
      • Buckhead Ridge is located in Glades County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Buckhead Ridge
  • Hendry County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Watson, with the one closest to Watson listed first.
    • Clewiston
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northwest)
    • Harlem
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the west)
      • Harlem is located in Hendry County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Harlem
  • Martin County

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

Cemeteries Near Watson ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Watson.

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 Watson - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

  • Ridgelawn Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northwest)
  • Foreverglades Mausoleum Gardens
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the east)
  • Port Mayaca Cemetery
    (26 miles [41.8 km] to the northeast)

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

Newspapers Published in Watson ...

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 14 newspapers that have been published in the area around Watson.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Watson, there are papers which were published within 19 miles [30.6 km]. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Watson.

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 Watson:

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 '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- Watson) 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.