RoadsideThoughts
A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of Texas >> Brewster County >> Edwards Place >> 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 Edwards Place (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 Edwards Place. 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 Edwards Place ...

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.

  • A typical abbreviation for Edwards Place: Edwards Pl. (or less commonly used: Edwards Plc.)
  • While the name of this community is Edwards Place, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Edwards Place may originally have been Edward's Place.

    Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Edwards Place might be written as Edward Place.

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 southeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals 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.

Edwards Place is located in Brewster 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 Brewster County: Jeff Davis, Pecos, Presidio & Terrell.

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

  • Brewster County     (The home county of Edwards Place)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Edwards Place, with the one closest to Edwards Place listed first.
    • Altuda
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the south)
      • Altuda is located in Brewster County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Altuda
    • Lenox
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the south)
      • Lenox is located in Brewster County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lenox
    • Alpine
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the west)
    • Marathon
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southeast)
  • San Patricio County
    • Paisano ‑ Historic
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the west)
      • Paisano is located in San Patricio County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Paisano

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

Cemeteries Near Edwards Place ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Edwards Place.

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 Edwards Place - one of the links might be able to help.

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Edwards Place, with the one closest to Edwards Place 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.<4>

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

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

  • Altuda
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the south)
    • Altuda is located in Brewster County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Altuda
  • Lenox
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the south)
    • Lenox is located in Brewster County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lenox
  • Alpine
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the west)
  • Marathon
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southeast)
  • Toronto
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the west)
    • Toronto is located in Brewster County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Toronto
  • Warwick
    (23 miles [37 km] to the southeast)
    • Warwick is located in Brewster County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Warwick
  • Paisano ‑ Historic
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the west)
    • Paisano is located in San Patricio County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Paisano
  • Haymond
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the southeast)
    • Haymond is located in Brewster County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Haymond

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

Newspapers Published in Edwards Place ...

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 7 newspapers that have been published in the area around Edwards Place.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Edwards Place, there are papers which were published within 14 miles [22.5 km]<5>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Edwards Place.

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 Edwards Place:

Footnotes ...

<1>It's generally believed that possessive apostrophes are removed to prevent confusion on maps where the apostrophe may be confused with a cartographic symbol. While this is generally true, it's not uncommon to find possessive apostrophes in administrative names (such as towns or counties).
<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 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.
<4>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 Edwards Place, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<5>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- Edwards Place) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.