RoadsideThoughts
A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of Nebraska >> Scotts Bluff County >> Baxter >> 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 Baxter (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 Baxter. 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 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.

Baxter is located in Scotts Bluff County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Scotts Bluff County: Banner, Box Butte, Morrill, Sioux & Goshen (WY).

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

  • Scotts Bluff County     (The home county of Baxter)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Baxter, with the one closest to Baxter listed first.
    • Minatare
      (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southwest)
    • Melbeta
      (5 miles [8 km] to the southwest)
    • Hillerage
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the west)
      • Hillerage is located in Scotts Bluff County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Hillerage
    • McGrew
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the south)
      • McGrew is located in Scotts Bluff County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for McGrew
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 101 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for McGrew <1>
    • Gering
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
      • Gering is located in Scotts Bluff County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Gering
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 8,061 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Gering <1>
    • Scottsbluff
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
    • Terrytown
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
      • Terrytown is located in Scotts Bluff County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Terrytown
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,163 people
    • Haig
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the west)
      • Haig is located in Scotts Bluff County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Haig
    • Mitchell
      (18 miles [29 km] to the west)
    • Morrill
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the west)
    • Stegall
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the west)
      • Stegall is located in Scotts Bluff County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Stegall
    • Scoville
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northwest)
      • Scoville is located in Scotts Bluff County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Scoville
  • Banner County
  • Morrill County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Baxter, with the one closest to Baxter listed first.
    • Craft
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southeast)
      • Craft is located in Morrill County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Craft
    • Bayard
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southeast)
    • Atkins ‑ Historic
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the southeast)
      • Atkins is located in Morrill County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Atkins
    • Angora
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the east)
    • Redington
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the southeast)
      • Redington is located in Morrill County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Redington
    • Bonner ‑ Historic
      (23 miles [37 km] to the east)
      • Bonner is located in Morrill County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bonner
    • Bridgeport
      (23 miles [37 km] to the southeast)
    • Alden ‑ Historic
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the southeast)
      • Alden is located in Morrill County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Alden

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

Cemeteries Near Baxter ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Baxter.

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

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

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

  • East Lawn Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the west)
  • Creighton Valley Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southwest)
  • High Butte Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the south)
  • Bayard Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bayard Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Bayard Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located outside and to the north of Bayard.
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #1116545 <2>
  • Fairview Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
  • West Lawn Cemetery
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the west)
  • Chimney Rock Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southeast)
  • Sunset Memorial Park
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the west)
  • Pierre Didier Papin Gravesite
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the southwest)
  • Angora Cemetery
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the east)
  • Pioneer Graves
    (18 miles [29 km] to the west)
  • Severson Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the northeast)
  • Continue List   (16 more) ...
    • Snake Creek Cemetery
      (18 miles [29 km] to the northeast)
    • Mitchell Valley Cemetery
      (18 miles [29 km] to the west)
    • Mitchell Cemetery
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the west)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Mitchell Cemetery
      • To give a relative sense of its location, the Mitchell Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located outside and to the northwest of Mitchell.
      • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #100980 <2>

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>

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

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

  • Minatare
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southwest)
  • Gering
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
    • Gering is located in Scotts Bluff County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Gering
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 8,061 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Gering <1>
  • Harrisburg
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the southwest)
  • Caldwell ‑ Historic
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the west)
    • Caldwell is located in Scotts Bluff County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Caldwell

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

Newspapers Published in Baxter ...

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 46 newspapers that have been published in the area around Baxter.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Baxter, there are papers which were published within 29 miles [46.7 km]<3>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Baxter.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we begin with 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 Baxter:

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 obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Baxter) 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 Baxter, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.