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The Commemorative Quarter for New Mexico





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 Grants (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 Grants. 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 Grants ...

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.

Prior to its current name of Grants, it was known as Grants Station.

The city of Grants was originally named Grants Camp

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.

A Few Details for Grants ...

While it's still very early in our research, we found that:

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 northeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors were in the next county to the east. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the north.

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 north 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.

Grants is located in Cibola County and is the County Seat.

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 Cibola County: Apache (AZ), Bernalillo, Catron, McKinley, Sandoval, Socorro & Valencia.

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

  • Cibola County     (The home county of Grants)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Grants, with the one closest to Grants listed first.
    • Milan
      (3 miles [4.8 km] to the northwest)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Milan have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Milan
      • Milan is located in Cibola County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 3,640 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Milan <2>
    • San Rafael
      (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southwest)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for San Rafael
      • San Rafael is located in Cibola County
    • Acomita Lake
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the southeast)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Acomita Lake have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Acomita Lake
      • Acomita Lake is located in Cibola County
    • San Fidel
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the east)
    • West Village
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the southeast)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for West Village have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for West Village
      • West Village is located in Cibola County
    • North Acomita Village
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the east)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for North Acomita Village have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for North Acomita Village
      • North Acomita Village is located in Cibola County
    • Cubero
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the east)
    • Seama
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the east)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Seama have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Seama
      • Seama is located in Cibola County
    • Encinal
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the east)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Encinal
      • Encinal is located in Cibola County
    • Harrisburg
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the east)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Harrisburg
      • Harrisburg is located in Cibola County
    • Casa Blanca
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the east)
    • Paraje
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the east)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Paraje
      • Paraje is located in Cibola County
    • Acoma Pueblo
      (23 miles [37 km] to the southeast)
  • McKinley County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Grants, with the one closest to Grants listed first.
    • Prewitt
      (18 miles [29 km] to the northwest)
    • Thoreau
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northwest)
    • Smith Lake
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the northwest)

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Grants ...

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 5 newspapers that have been published in the area around Grants.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Grants. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Grants and those printed in the larger area surrounding Grants.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 3 miles [4.8 km]<3> of Grants.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we 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 Grants:

Cemeteries Near Grants ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Grants.

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

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

  • Grants Memorial Park
    (Less than 2 miles to the northeast)
  • La Morada Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southwest)
  • Porter Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southwest)
  • Pioneer Memorial Park
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the northwest)
  • San Fidel Cemetery
    (15 miles [24.1 km] to the east)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for the San Fidel Cemetery. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<5>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the San Fidel Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38402 <4>
  • New York Cemetery
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the east)
  • Budville Cemetery
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the east)
  • Cubero Cemetery
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the east)
  • Paraje Cemetery
    (22 miles [35.4 km] to the east)
  • San Esteban Del Rey Mission Cemetery
    (23 miles [37 km] to the southeast)
  • Casa Blanca Cemetery
    (23 miles [37 km] to the east)
  • Tinaja Cemetery
    (24 miles [38.6 km] to the west)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Tinaja Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Tinaja Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38481 <4>
  • Continue List   (4 more) ...
    • Eckerman Cemetery
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the east)
      • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for the Eckerman Cemetery. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<5>
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Eckerman Cemetery
      • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38035 <4>
    • Paguate Cemetery
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the east)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Paguate Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Paguate Cemetery
      • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38309 <4>
    • San Jose Cemetery
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the east)

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

The official website for Grants: www.cityofgrants.com/

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

Footnotes ...

<1>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.
<2>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<3>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Grants) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Grants. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 35.1535, Longitude: -107.8508    
<4>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.
<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.




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 07 Apr 2024