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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 Homer (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 Homer. 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 Homer ...

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.

In past government published Postal Guides, Homer was referred to as Homer Courthouse.

You might be interested in other communities that are also named Homer. More information can be found on our Tidbits & Trivia Page for Homer.

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.

For more information about how community names might have been affected by the Board of Geographic Names (BGN), see our page about Placename Rules.

Neighboring Parishes/Counties ...

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

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

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring parishes/counties 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 north contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring parishes/counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

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

Homer is located in Claiborne 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 Claiborne Parish: Columbia (AR), Union (AR), Bienville, Lincoln, Union & Webster.

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

  • Claiborne Parish     (The home parish of Homer)
  • Bienville Parish
  • Bossier Parish
    • The following are listed by their distance from Homer, with the one closest to Homer listed first.
    • Ivan
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the west)
    • Bellevue
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the west)
    • Princeton
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the southwest)
  • Lincoln Parish
  • Union Parish
    • The following are listed by their distance from Homer, with the one closest to Homer listed first.
    • Cane Ridge ‑ Historic
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the east)
      • Cane Ridge is located in Union Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cane Ridge
    • Bernice
      (23 miles [37 km] to the east)
    • Lillie
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the east)
    • Pisgah
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the east)
    • Spearsville
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the east)
  • Webster Parish
    • The following are listed by their distance from Homer, with the one closest to Homer listed first.
    • Shongaloo
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Minden
      (18 miles [29 km] to the southwest)
    • Dixie Inn
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the southwest)
      • Dixie Inn is located in Webster Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Dixie Inn
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 266 people
    • Dubberly
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the southwest)
    • Cotton Valley
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the west)
    • Sibley
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the southwest)
    • Sarepta
      (23 miles [37 km] to the west)
    • Cullen
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northwest)
    • Heflin
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the southwest)
    • Yellow Pine
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the southwest)
    • Springhill
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northwest)
    • Buckhorn ‑ Historic
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southwest)
      • Buckhorn is located in Webster Parish
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Buckhorn
    • Doyline
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southwest)
  • Columbia County (AR)
  • Union County (AR)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Homer, with the one closest to Homer listed first.
    • Dodge City
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the north)
      • Dodge City is located in Union County (AR)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Dodge City
    • Junction City
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the northeast)
      • Junction City is located in Union County (AR)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Junction City
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 520 people
    • Scotland
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northeast)
    • Blanchard Springs ‑ Historic
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northeast)

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

Cemeteries Near Homer ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Homer.

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

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Homer, with the one closest to Homer 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.<4>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Homer had a population of 1,132 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Homer had a population of 2,789 people.

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

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Homer ...

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 47 newspapers that have been published in the area around Homer.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Homer. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Homer and those printed in the larger area surrounding Homer.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 26 miles [41.8 km]<3> of Homer.

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 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 Homer:

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