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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of Texas >> Angelina County >> Diboll >> 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 Diboll (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 Diboll. 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 southwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most 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.

Diboll is located in Angelina 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 Angelina County: Cherokee, Houston, Jasper, Nacogdoches, Polk, San Augustine, Trinity & Tyler.

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

  • Angelina County     (The home county of Diboll)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Diboll, with the one closest to Diboll listed first.
    • Rutland
      (Less than 2 miles to the west)
      • Rutland is located in Angelina County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rutland
    • Shady Grove
      (Less than 2 miles to the east)
      • Shady Grove is located in Angelina County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Shady Grove
    • Prairie Grove
      (3 miles [4.8 km] to the east)
      • Prairie Grove is located in Angelina County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Prairie Grove
    • Burke
      (3 miles [4.8 km] to the north)
    • Beulah
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the east)
      • Beulah is located in Angelina County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Beulah
    • Peavy
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the north)
      • Peavy is located in Angelina County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Peavy
    • Blix
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northwest)
    • Granville
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northwest)
    • Bald Hill
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the northeast)
      • Bald Hill is located in Angelina County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bald Hill
    • Hudson
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the north)
      • Hudson is located in Angelina County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Hudson
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 5,288 people
    • Providence
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the north)
      • Providence is located in Angelina County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Providence
    • Lufkin
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the north)
    • Homer
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the northeast)
  • Cherokee County
  • Houston County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Diboll, with the one closest to Diboll listed first.
    • Hagerville
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the northwest)
    • Fog Town
      (23 miles [37 km] to the northwest)
      • Fog Town is located in Houston County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Fog Town
    • Ratcliff
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northwest)
    • Kennard
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Tadmor
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)
    • Harrison Town
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northwest)
      • Harrison Town is located in Houston County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Harrison Town
  • Nacogdoches County
  • Polk County
  • San Augustine County
    • Zana ‑ Historic
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the east)
  • Trinity County
  • Tyler County

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

Cemeteries Near Diboll ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Diboll.

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 Diboll - one of the links might be able to help.

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Diboll, with the one closest to Diboll 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.<5>

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

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

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Diboll ...

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 50 newspapers that have been published in the area around Diboll.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Diboll. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Diboll and those printed in the larger area surrounding Diboll.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 29 miles [46.7 km]<4> of Diboll.

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 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 Diboll:

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>To help visualize the location of the cemetery, we've drawn a straight line between the communities of Diboll and Zavalla. The cemetery can be found near that line and roughly halfway between the two communities. Remember that this is just an approximate location.
<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 from Point A (ie- Diboll) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.
<5>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 Diboll, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.