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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
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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 Ben Bolt (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 Ben Bolt. 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 northeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors and hospitals 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.

Ben Bolt is located in Jim Wells County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Jim Wells County: Brooks, Duval, Kleberg, Live Oak, Nueces & San Patricio.

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

  • Jim Wells County     (The home county of Ben Bolt)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Ben Bolt, with the one closest to Ben Bolt listed first.
    • Alice Acres
      (5 miles [8 km] to the north)
      • Alice Acres is located in Jim Wells County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Alice Acres
      • Alice Acres has also been known as:
      • Alice Acres Colonia
    • Coyote Acres
      (5 miles [8 km] to the northwest)
      • Coyote Acres is located in Jim Wells County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Coyote Acres
      • Coyote Acres has also been known as:
      • Coyote Acres Colonia
    • Rancho Alegre
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)
      • Rancho Alegre is located in Jim Wells County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rancho Alegre
    • Alice
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the north)
    • Loma Linda East
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the northwest)
      • Loma Linda East is located in Jim Wells County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Loma Linda East
      • Loma Linda East has also been known as:
      • Loma Linda East Colonia
    • Water City Estates
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the northeast)
      • Water City Estates is located in Jim Wells County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Water City Estates
      • Water City Estates has also been known as:
      • Water City Estates Colonia
    • Owl Ranch - Amargosa
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the north)
      • Owl Ranch - Amargosa is located in Jim Wells County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Owl Ranch - Amargosa
    • Alfred - South La Paloma
      (18 miles [29 km] to the north)
    • Premont
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the south)
    • Westdale
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the north)
      • Westdale is located in Jim Wells County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Westdale
    • Orange Grove
      (23 miles [37 km] to the north)
    • K-Bar Ranch
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the north)
      • K-Bar Ranch is located in Jim Wells County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for K-Bar Ranch
  • Brooks County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Ben Bolt, with the one closest to Ben Bolt listed first.
    • Airport Road Addition
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the south)
    • Falfurrias
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the south)
    • Flowella
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the south)
      • Flowella is located in Brooks County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Flowella
  • Duval County
  • Kleberg County
  • Nueces County
  • San Patricio County
    • San Patricio
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northeast)
      • San Patricio is located in San Patricio County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for San Patricio
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 366 people

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

Cemeteries Near Ben Bolt ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Ben Bolt.

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 Ben Bolt - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

  • Calaveras Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the east)
  • Lattas Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the northeast)
  • Alice Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)
  • Fraternal Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)
  • Barrera Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
  • Hinojosa Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
  • Gonzales Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
  • Collins Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the north)
  • Cadenas Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southwest)
  • Rose Lawn Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the north)
  • Saltiero Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southwest)
  • Ramirez Cemetery
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the west)
  • Continue List   (62 more) ...
    • Garcia Cemetery
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southwest)
    • Perez Cemetery
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southwest)
    • Valadez Cemetery
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southwest)

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

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

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

Newspapers Published in Ben Bolt ...

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 37 newspapers that have been published in the area around Ben Bolt.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Ben Bolt, there are papers which were published within 29 miles [46.7 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Ben Bolt.

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 websites either 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 Ben Bolt:

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 Ben Bolt, 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' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Ben Bolt) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.