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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> Commonwealth of Pennsylvania >> Westmoreland County >> Weinel Crossroads >> 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 Weinel Crossroads (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 Weinel Crossroads. 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 Weinel Crossroads ...

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 occur.

Another variation: Weinel Cross Roads.

  • A typical abbreviation for Weinel Crossroads: Weinel Xrds.

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 northeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and 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.

Weinel Crossroads is located in Westmoreland County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Westmoreland County: Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler, Cambria, Fayette, Indiana & Somerset.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Weinel Crossroads ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Weinel Crossroads.

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 Weinel Crossroads - one of the links might be able to help.

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Weinel Crossroads, with the one closest to Weinel Crossroads 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.<3>

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

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

  • Leechburg
    (Less than 2 miles to the northeast)
  • Bagdad
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the northwest)
  • Vandergrift
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the east)
  • Markle
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the south)
    • Markle is located in Westmoreland County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Markle
  • Paulton
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southeast)
    • Paulton is located in Westmoreland County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Paulton
  • Apollo
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southeast)
    • Apollo is located in Armstrong County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Apollo
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,507 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Apollo <1>
  • Metcalf
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
    • Metcalf is located in Westmoreland County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Metcalf
  • Milligantown
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southwest)
    • Milligantown is located in Westmoreland County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Milligantown
  • Garvers Ferry
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Garvers Ferry is located in Westmoreland County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Garvers Ferry
  • Sligo
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Sligo is located in Allegheny County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sligo
  • Karns
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
  • Braeburn
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
    • Braeburn is located in Westmoreland County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Braeburn
  • Continue List   (14 more) ...
    • North Washington
      (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
      • North Washington is located in Westmoreland County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for North Washington
    • Aladdin
      (5 miles [8 km] to the north)
    • Dime
      (5 miles [8 km] to the northeast)
      • Dime is located in Armstrong County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Dime

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

Newspapers Published in Weinel Crossroads ...

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 15 newspapers that have been published in the area around Weinel Crossroads.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Weinel Crossroads, there are papers which were published within 11 miles [17.7 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Weinel Crossroads.

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 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 Weinel Crossroads:

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>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.
<3>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 Weinel Crossroads, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<4>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' (or 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- Weinel Crossroads) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.