RoadsideThoughts
A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of New Mexico >> Chaves County >> Higgins Place >> Genealogy HelperIndex...










Learn About
The Commemorative
Quarter for
New Mexico

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 Higgins Place (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 Higgins Place. 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 Higgins Place ...

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 Higgins Place: Higgins Pl. (or less commonly used: Higgins Plc.)
  • While the name of this community is Higgins Place, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Higgins Place may originally have been Higgin's Place.

    Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Higgins Place might be written as Higgin Place.

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.

Higgins Place is located in Chaves 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 Chaves County: DeBaca, Eddy, Lea, Lincoln, Otero & Roosevelt.

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

  • Chaves County     (The home county of Higgins Place)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Higgins Place, with the one closest to Higgins Place listed first.
    • Dexter
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Dexter have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Dexter
      • Dexter is located in Chaves County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,244 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Dexter <3>
    • Hagerman
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
    • Roswell
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the north)
    • Lake Arthur
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the southeast)
  • Eddy County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Higgins Place, with the one closest to Higgins Place listed first.
    • Artesia
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the south)
    • Hope
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southwest)

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

Newspapers Published in Higgins Place ...

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 43 newspapers that have been published in the area around Higgins Place.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Higgins Place, there are papers which were published within 28 miles [45.1 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Higgins Place.

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 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 Higgins Place:

Cemeteries Near Higgins Place ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Higgins Place.

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

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

  • Hagerman Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southeast)
  • Hagerman Masonic Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southeast)
  • South Park Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the north)
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the South Park Cemetery is located outside and to the south of Roswell.
    • The South Park Cemetery has also been known as:
    • South Hill Cemetery
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the South Park Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38461 <5>
  • Lake Arthur Cemetery
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the southeast)
  • Memory Lawn Memorial Park
    (16 miles [25.7 km] to the north)
  • St. Marys Cemetery
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the north)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the St. Marys Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the St. Marys Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38390 <5>
  • Hope West Cemetery
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Hope West Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Hope West Cemetery
  • Hope South Cemetery
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the south)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Hope South Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Hope South Cemetery

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.<6>

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

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

  • Roswell
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the north)
  • Hope
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southwest)

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

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

The official website for Chaves County: www.co.chaves.nm.us/

The official website for State of New Mexico: www.newmexico.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>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 things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Higgins Place) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Higgins Place. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 33.1795, Longitude: -104.5250       In this case, the coordinates for Higgins Place have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<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>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 Higgins Place, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.




 

Copyright 2024
All Rights Reserved

Thank you for visiting our website.

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: 07 Apr 2024