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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of Louisiana >> Avoyelles Parish >> Gold Dust >> Genealogy HelperIndex...

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 Gold Dust (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 Gold Dust. 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 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.

Gold Dust is located in Avoyelles 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 Avoyelles Parish: Catahoula, Concordia, Evangeline, La Salle, Pointe Coupee, Rapides & Saint Landry.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Gold Dust ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Gold Dust.

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 Gold Dust - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

  • Lauther Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the north)
  • Fogleman Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the north)
  • Keller Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the west)
  • Pythian Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)
  • Fergerson Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
  • Fontenot Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the south)
  • Hebert Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the east)
  • Booneville Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the north)
  • Johnson Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the northwest)
  • Chaney Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the west)
  • Vanburg Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
  • Clark Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
  • Continue List   (196 more) ...
    • Murdock Cemetery
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southwest)
    • St. Josephs Cemetery
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
    • St. Marks Cemetery
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)

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

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

  • Barbreck
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the south)
    • Barbreck is located in Saint Landry Parish
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Barbreck
  • Eola
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the north)
  • Whiteville
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
    • Whiteville is located in Saint Landry Parish
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Whiteville
  • Bunkie
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)
  • Morrow
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the east)
  • Haas
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northwest)
    • Haas is located in Avoyelles Parish
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Haas
  • Boretta
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
  • Evergreen
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the northeast)
  • Dubuisson
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
    • Dubuisson is located in Saint Landry Parish
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Dubuisson
  • Garland
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southeast)
    • Garland is located in Saint Landry Parish
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Garland
  • Big Cane
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the east)
    • Big Cane is located in Saint Landry Parish
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Big Cane
  • Cheneyville
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the northwest)
  • Continue List   (13 more) ...

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

Newspapers Published in Gold Dust ...

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 32 newspapers that have been published in the area around Gold Dust.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Gold Dust, there are papers which were published within 23 miles [37 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Gold Dust.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we like to start with the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These helpful 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 Gold Dust:

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 Gold Dust, 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 obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Gold Dust) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.