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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 Bethlehem (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 Bethlehem. 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 Parishes ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring parishes.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the southeast corner of their home parish. During their lives, most doctors and hospitals were in the next parish to the east. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the parish to the south.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring parishes instead of the parish in which they lived:  their home parish contained property and probate records; the parish to the east contained birth and death records; the parish to the south contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring parishes, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Bethlehem is located in Winn Parish.

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

The following parishes adjoin and form the boundaries of Winn Parish: Bienville, Caldwell, Grant, Jackson, La Salle & Natchitoches.

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

  • Winn Parish     (The home parish of Bethlehem)
  • Bienville Parish
  • Grant Parish
    • The following are listed by their distance from Bethlehem, with the one closest to Bethlehem listed first.
    • Montgomery
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the south)
    • Black Creek ‑ Historic
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the southeast)
      • Black Creek is located in Grant Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Black Creek
    • Georgetown
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southeast)
  • Jackson Parish
    • The following are listed by their distance from Bethlehem, with the one closest to Bethlehem listed first.
    • Jonesboro
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the north)
    • Hodge
      (18 miles [29 km] to the north)
    • East Hodge
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the north)
    • North Hodge
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the north)
      • North Hodge is located in Jackson Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for North Hodge
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 372 people
    • Weston
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the northeast)
    • Quitman
      (23 miles [37 km] to the north)
    • Zoar
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northeast)
    • Ansley
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the north)
    • Chatham
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northeast)
    • Dalley ‑ Historic
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northeast)
      • Dalley is located in Jackson Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Dalley
  • La Salle Parish
    • The following are listed by their distance from Bethlehem, with the one closest to Bethlehem listed first.
    • Urania
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the east)
    • Tullos
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the southeast)
  • Natchitoches Parish
    • The following are listed by their distance from Bethlehem, with the one closest to Bethlehem listed first.
    • Goldonna
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the west)
    • Chestnut
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the west)
    • Caspari ‑ Historic
      (18 miles [29 km] to the southwest)
      • Caspari is located in Natchitoches Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Caspari
    • Clarence
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the southwest)
    • Ashland
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Campti
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the west)
      • Campti is located in Natchitoches Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Campti
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,033 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Campti <1>
    • Natchitoches
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the southwest)
    • Forest
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the southwest)
      • Forest is located in Natchitoches Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Forest
    • Grappes Bluff
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the west)
    • Powhatan
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the west)
    • Natchez
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southwest)
    • Melrose
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the south)
  • Red River Parish
    • Martin
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the west)
      • Martin is located in Red River Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Martin
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 543 people

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

Cemeteries Near Bethlehem ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Bethlehem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Newspapers Published in Bethlehem ...

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 26 newspapers that have been published in the area around Bethlehem.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Bethlehem, there are papers which were published within 24 miles [38.6 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Bethlehem.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we start with 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 Bethlehem:

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 Bethlehem, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<4>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Bethlehem) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.