RoadsideThoughts
A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> Commonwealth of Pennsylvania >> Lebanon County >> Timber Hills >> 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 Timber Hills (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 Timber Hills. 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 doctors 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.

Timber Hills is located in Lebanon County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Lebanon County: Berks, Dauphin, Lancaster & Schuylkill.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Timber Hills ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Timber Hills.

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 Timber Hills - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

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 Timber Hills in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Timber Hills.

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

  • Mount Gretna
    (Less than 2 miles to the west)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Mount Gretna have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Mount Gretna
    • Mount Gretna is located in Lebanon County
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 209 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Mount Gretna <2>
  • Colebrook
    (Less than 2 miles to the west)
  • Fontana
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the north)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for Fontana. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<3>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Fontana
    • Fontana is located in Lebanon County
    • Google driving directions:
    • From your current location to Fontana
    • From Timber Hills to Fontana
  • Lawn
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southwest)
  • Mastersonville
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the south)
  • Mount Hope
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southeast)
  • Elstonville
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southeast)
  • Miners Village
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the east)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Miners Village have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Miners Village
    • Miners Village is located in Lebanon County
  • Cornwall
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Cornwall have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cornwall
    • Cornwall is located in Lebanon County
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 4,382 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Cornwall <2>
  • North Cornwall
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for North Cornwall have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for North Cornwall
    • North Cornwall is located in Lebanon County
  • Rexmont
    (5 miles [8 km] to the northeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Rexmont have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rexmont
    • Rexmont is located in Lebanon County
  • Campbelltown
    (5 miles [8 km] to the west)
  • Continue List   (16 more) ...
    • Bellaire
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southwest)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Bellaire have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bellaire
      • Bellaire is located in Lancaster County
    • Milton Grove
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southwest)
    • Annville
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Annville have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Annville
      • Annville is located in Lebanon County
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Annville <2>

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

Newspapers Published in Timber Hills ...

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 98 newspapers that have been published in the area around Timber Hills.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Timber Hills, there are papers which were published within 12 miles [19.3 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Timber Hills.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we begin 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 Timber Hills:

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>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.
<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 drawn from Point A (ie- Timber Hills) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Timber Hills. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 40.2464, Longitude: -76.4795       In this case, the coordinates for Timber Hills 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 Timber Hills, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.