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Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

So far, we found very little information about Bethel. The little that we've found leads us believe that the community is historic.<1>

We've added Bethel to our Gazetteer with the hope that we can develop more information. If you can help us with Bethel, please Contact Us.

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 Bethel (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 Bethel. 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 southeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals were in the next county to the east. 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 east 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.

Although our information shows that the community of Bethel is historic, it would have been located within present day Roosevelt County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Roosevelt County: Chaves, Curry, Lea, Quay, Bailey (TX) & Cochran (TX).

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

  • Roosevelt County     (The home county of Bethel)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Bethel, with the one closest to Bethel listed first.
    • Floyd
      (5 miles [8 km] to the west)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Floyd have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Floyd
      • Floyd is located in Roosevelt County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 103 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Floyd <3>
    • Portales
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southeast)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Portales have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Portales
      • Portales is located in Roosevelt County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 11,487 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Portales <3>
    • Dora
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the south)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Dora
      • Dora is located in Roosevelt County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 118 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Dora <3>
    • Elida
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the southwest)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Elida
      • Elida is located in Roosevelt County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 175 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Elida <3>
  • Curry County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Bethel, with the one closest to Bethel listed first.
    • Saint Vrain
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the north)
    • Melrose
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the northwest)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Melrose have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Melrose
      • Melrose is located in Curry County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 622 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Melrose <3>
    • Clovis
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the northeast)
    • Texico
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the northeast)
    • Weber City
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the north)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Weber City have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Weber City
      • Weber City is located in Curry County
  • Parmer County (TX)
    • Farwell
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northeast)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Farwell have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Farwell
      • Farwell is located in Parmer County (TX)
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,275 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Farwell <3>

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

Newspapers Published in Bethel ...

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 51 newspapers that have been published in the area around Bethel.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Bethel, there are papers which were published within 26 miles [41.8 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Bethel.

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 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 Bethel:

Cemeteries Near Bethel ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Bethel.

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 Bethel covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

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

  • Bethel Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the southwest)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for the Bethel Cemetery. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<5>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Bethel Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #37953 <6>
  • Floyd Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the west)
  • Portales Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
  • Rest Lawn Memorial Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southeast)
  • Upton Cemetery
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Upton Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Upton Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38496 <6>
  • Upton Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Upton Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Upton Cemetery
  • Memorial Cemetery
    (16 miles [25.7 km] to the northwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Memorial Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Memorial Cemetery
  • Eiland Cemetery
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southeast)
  • North Cemetery
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the North Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the North Cemetery
  • Ingram Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the southwest)
  • Mt. Zion Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the southeast)
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Mt. Zion Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located 3 miles [4.8 km]<4> to the south of Dora.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Mt. Zion Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38257 <6>
  • Mission Garden Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the northeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Mission Garden Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Mission Garden Cemetery
  • Continue List   (17 more) ...
    • Benson Cemetery
      (18 miles [29 km] to the west)
    • Elida Cemetery
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the southwest)
      • To give a relative sense of its location, the Elida Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located outside and to the north of Elida.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Elida Cemetery
      • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38045 <6>
    • Arch Cemetery
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the east)
      • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for the Arch Cemetery. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<5>
      • To give a relative sense of its location, the Arch Cemetery is located in Arch.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Arch Cemetery
      • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #37944 <6>

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

The official website for Roosevelt County: www.rooseveltcounty.com/

The official website for State of New Mexico: www.newmexico.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>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 Bethel, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<2>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.
<3>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<4>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 drawn from Point A (ie- Bethel) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Bethel. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 34.2287, Longitude: -103.4747       In this case, the coordinates for Bethel have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<5>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.
<6>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.




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 07 Apr 2024