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Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

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

We've added McGaffey to our Gazetteer with the hope that we can develop more information. If you can help us with McGaffey, 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 McGaffey (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 McGaffey. 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 northwest 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 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 west 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.

Although our information shows that the community of McGaffey is historic, it would have been located within present day McKinley 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 McKinley County: Apache (AZ), Cibola, San Juan & Sandoval.

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

  • McKinley County     (The home county of McGaffey)
    • The following are listed by their distance from McGaffey, with the one closest to McGaffey listed first.
    • Fort Wingate
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)
    • Bread Springs
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the west)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bread Springs
      • Bread Springs is located in McKinley County
    • Continental Divide
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the east)
    • Navajo Wingate Village
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the north)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Navajo Wingate Village have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Navajo Wingate Village
      • Navajo Wingate Village is located in McKinley County
    • Church Rock
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the northwest)
    • Rehoboth
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the northwest)
    • Red Rock
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the west)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Red Rock
      • Red Rock is located in McKinley County
    • Vanderwagen
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the southwest)
    • Thoreau
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the east)
    • Gallup
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the northwest)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Gallup
      • Gallup is located in McKinley County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 21,253 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Gallup <2>
    • Ramah
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the south)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Ramah have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ramah
      • Ramah is located in McKinley County
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Ramah <2>
    • Defiance
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the west)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Defiance
      • Defiance is located in McKinley County
  • Cibola County
    • Pinehill
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the south)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Pinehill have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Pinehill
      • Pinehill is located in Cibola County
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Pinehill <2>
  • Apache County (AZ)

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

Cemeteries Near McGaffey ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of McGaffey.

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

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

  • Torreon Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Torreon Cemetery
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for the Torreon Cemetery. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<4>
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38487 <5>
  • McGaffey Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the southwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the McGaffey Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the McGaffey Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38219 <5>
  • Pinehaven Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the west)
  • Mormon Colony Cemetery
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Mormon Colony Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Mormon Colony Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38247 <5>
  • Hillcrest Cemetery
    (16 miles [25.7 km] to the northwest)
  • Ramah Cemetery
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the south)
  • Gallup City Cemetery
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the northwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Gallup City Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Gallup City Cemetery is located 5 miles [8 km]<6> to the east of Gallup.
  • Sunset Memorial Gardens
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the northwest)
  • Tinaja Cemetery
    (24 miles [38.6 km] to the southeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Tinaja Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Tinaja Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38481 <5>
  • El Morro Cemetery
    (26 miles [41.8 km] to the south)

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

Newspapers Published in McGaffey ...

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 36 newspapers that have been published in the area around McGaffey.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of McGaffey, there are papers which were published within 29 miles [46.7 km]<6>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for McGaffey.

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 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 McGaffey:

The official website for McKinley County: www.co.mckinley.nm.us/

The official website for State of New Mexico: https://www.nm.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 McGaffey, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<2>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<3>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.
<4>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.
<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>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- McGaffey) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in McGaffey. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 35.3753, Longitude: -108.5156       In this case, the coordinates for McGaffey have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 28 Apr 2025