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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 Convent (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 Convent. 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 southwest corner of their home parish. During their lives, most doctors and hospitals were in the next parish to the west. 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 west 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.

Convent is located in Saint James Parish and is the Parish Seat.

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 Saint James Parish: Ascension, Assumption, Lafourche & Saint John the Baptist.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Convent ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Convent.

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

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

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

  • St. James Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the southwest)
  • St. Michael Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the southeast)
  • Celestin Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the west)
  • Mt. Calvary Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northwest)
  • Antioch Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the east)
  • St. Joseph Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the east)
  • Philippian Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northwest)
  • Highway Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the east)
  • Western Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the east)
  • Buena Vista Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northwest)
  • Trosclair Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
  • St. Phillips Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the east)
  • Continue List   (121 more) ...
    • Monroe Cemetery
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the northwest)
    • Woodville Cemetery
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
    • Orange Grove Cemetery
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the northwest)

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>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Convent had a population of 650 people in 1895 with a post office and no railroad service.

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

  • Saint James
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the south)
  • Hester
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the east)
  • Welcome
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Welcome is located in Saint James Parish
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Welcome
  • Central
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Central is located in Saint James Parish
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Central
  • Remy
    (5 miles [8 km] to the east)
    • Remy is located in Saint James Parish
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Remy
  • White Hall
    (5 miles [8 km] to the northwest)
    • White Hall is located in Saint James Parish
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for White Hall
  • Vacherie
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the east)
  • Paulina
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the east)
  • Union
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northwest)
    • Union is located in Saint James Parish
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Union
  • Lauderdale
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northwest)
    • Lauderdale is located in Saint James Parish
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lauderdale
  • Wallace
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
    • Wallace is located in Saint John the Baptist Parish
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Wallace
  • Cofield
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the northwest)
  • Continue List   (14 more) ...

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Convent ...

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 33 newspapers that have been published in the area around Convent.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Convent. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Convent and those printed in the larger area surrounding Convent.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 13 miles [20.9 km]<4> of Convent.

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 Convent:

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 Convent, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<4>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- Convent) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.