RoadsideThoughts
A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of New Mexico >> Socorro County >> Hard Luck Crossing >> 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 Hard Luck Crossing (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 Hard Luck Crossing. 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 Hard Luck Crossing ...

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.

For example, a typical abbreviation for Hard Luck Crossing: Hard Luck Xing.

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.

Hard Luck Crossing is located in Socorro County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Socorro County: Catron, Cibola, Lincoln, Sierra, Torrance & Valencia.

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

  • Socorro County     (The home county of Hard Luck Crossing)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Hard Luck Crossing, with the one closest to Hard Luck Crossing listed first.
    • Lava
      (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
      • Lava is located in Socorro County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lava
    • San Antonito
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the north)
    • San Antonio
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
      • San Antonio is located in Socorro County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for San Antonio
  • Sierra County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Hard Luck Crossing, with the one closest to Hard Luck Crossing listed first.
    • Engle ‑ Historic
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the south)
      • Engle is located in Sierra County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Engle
    • Rock Canyon
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the southwest)
      • Rock Canyon is located in Sierra County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rock Canyon
    • Elephant Butte
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southwest)
    • Cuchillo
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the southwest)
      • Cuchillo is located in Sierra County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cuchillo

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

Cemeteries Near Hard Luck Crossing ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Hard Luck Crossing.

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 Hard Luck Crossing - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

  • Ft. Craig Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the north)
  • San Marcial Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the north)
  • Engle Cemetery
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the south)
  • Carthage Cemetery
    (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northeast)
  • Monticello Cemetery
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the west)
  • Elephant Butte Cemetery
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the south)

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.<2>

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

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

  • Paraje ‑ Historic
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
    • Paraje is located in Socorro County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Paraje
  • Lava
    (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
    • Lava is located in Socorro County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lava
  • San Marcial ‑ Historic
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the north)
    • San Marcial is located in Socorro County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for San Marcial
  • Crocker
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
    • Crocker is located in Sierra County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Crocker
  • Engle ‑ Historic
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the south)
    • Engle is located in Sierra County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Engle
  • San Antonio
    (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
    • San Antonio is located in Socorro County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for San Antonio
  • Monticello ‑ Historic
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the west)
    • Monticello is located in Sierra County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Monticello
  • Carthage ‑ Historic
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northeast)
    • Carthage is located in Socorro County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Carthage

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

Newspapers Published in Hard Luck Crossing ...

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 Hard Luck Crossing.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Hard Luck Crossing, there are papers which were published within 10 miles [16.1 km]<3>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Hard Luck Crossing.

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 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 Hard Luck Crossing:

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>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 Hard Luck Crossing, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<3>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- Hard Luck Crossing) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.