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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 Buies Creek (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 Buies Creek. 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 Buies Creek ...

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.

Although we can't give a definitive list, hopefully the following will give you a feel for the variations that might have occurred.

  • A typical abbreviation for Buies Creek: Buies Crk. (or less commonly used: Buies Ck. or Buies Cr.)
  • While the name of this community is Buies Creek, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Buies Creek may originally have been Buie's Creek.

    Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Buies Creek might be written as Buie Creek.

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.

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

Buies Creek is located in Harnett County.

To see how the shape of North Carolina's counties have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Harnett County: Chatham, Cumberland, Johnston, Lee, Sampson & Wake.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Buies Creek ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Buies Creek.

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.

If you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our selection of Genealogy Websites (see below).

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Buies Creek, with the one closest to Buies Creek 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.<7>

While we didn't find Buies Creek in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Buies Creek.

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

  • Barclaysville
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northeast)
  • Lillington
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
  • Turlington
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
  • Bunnlevel
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the south)
  • Averasboro ‑ Historic
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the south)
  • Dunn
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southeast)
  • Benson
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the east)
  • Carlos
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the south)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Carlos have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Carlos
    • Carlos is located in Cumberland County
  • Godwin
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the south)
  • Spilona
    (15 miles [24.1 km] to the east)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Spilona have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Spilona
    • Spilona is located in Johnston County
  • Banks
    (15 miles [24.1 km] to the north)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Banks have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Banks
    • Banks is located in Wake County
  • Wade
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the south)
  • Continue List   (15 more) ...
    • Holly Springs
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the north)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Holly Springs have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Holly Springs
      • Holly Springs is located in Wake County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 39,882 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Holly Springs <2>
    • Mingo
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southeast)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Mingo have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Mingo
      • Mingo is located in Sampson County
    • McKoy
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southeast)
      • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for McKoy. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<3>
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for McKoy
      • McKoy is located in Johnston County
      • Google driving directions:
      • From your current location to McKoy
      • From Buies Creek to McKoy

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Buies Creek ...

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 29 newspapers that have been published in the area around Buies Creek.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Buies Creek. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Buies Creek and those printed in the larger area surrounding Buies Creek.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 22 miles [35.4 km]<6> of Buies Creek.

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 professional and volunteer 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 Buies Creek:

Unfortunately, we don't know of a website for Buies Creek. If you can help, please contact us through our Feedback Page.

The official website for Harnett County: www.harnett.org/

The official website for State of North Carolina: https://www.nc.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>It's generally believed that possessive apostrophes are removed to prevent confusion on maps where the apostrophe may be confused with a cartographic symbol. While this is generally true, it's not uncommon to find possessive apostrophes in administrative names (such as towns or counties).
<2>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<3>An 'estimated' location is one where we have been given GPS coordinates, but are unable to verify the accuracy of those coordinates. That said, we have some confidence that we have placed the marker near the actual location. A typical reason for being unable to verify a location is that it might be on private property or maybe historic and gone without an obvious trace.
<4>The location has been supplied by the Geographic Names Information System - which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). While these values should be definitive, we found that accuracy can vary and you should double-check the location if accuracy is required.
<5>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.
<6>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' (or 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- Buies Creek) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Buies Creek. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 35.4094, Longitude: -78.7378    
<7>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 Buies Creek, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.




 

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In closing, please keep in mind that we can not guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of the information on this website, so use with care. We encourage you to double-check the information that is critical to you.

If you've found an error or have additional information that you would like to share, please don't hesitate to write: Click here to contact us.

This page was last modified/updated: 28 Apr 2025