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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 Higginbotham (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 Higginbotham. 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 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.

Higginbotham is located in Gaines 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 Gaines County: Lea (NM), Andrews, Dawson, Martin, Terry & Yoakum.

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

  • Gaines County     (The home county of Higginbotham)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Higginbotham, with the one closest to Higginbotham listed first.
    • Denver City
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the northeast)
    • Seminole
      (23 miles [37 km] to the southeast)
    • Seagraves
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the east)
  • Terry County
    • Tokio ‑ Historic
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northeast)
  • Yoakum County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Higginbotham, with the one closest to Higginbotham listed first.
    • Plains
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the northeast)
    • Bronco
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the north)
      • Bronco is located in Yoakum County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bronco
  • Lea County (NM)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Higginbotham, with the one closest to Higginbotham listed first.
    • Air Base City
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the southwest)
      • Air Base City is located in Lea County (NM)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Air Base City
    • Humble City
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the southwest)
      • Humble City is located in Lea County (NM)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Humble City
    • Hobbs
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the southwest)
      • Hobbs is located in Lea County (NM)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Hobbs
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 39,339 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Hobbs <1>
    • Lovington
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the west)
    • Hillburn City
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the northwest)
      • Hillburn City is located in Lea County (NM)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Hillburn City
    • Bronco
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the north)
      • Bronco is located in Lea County (NM)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bronco
    • Monument
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the southwest)
    • McDonald
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northwest)
    • Arkansas Junction
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the southwest)
      • Arkansas Junction is located in Lea County (NM)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Arkansas Junction
    • Gladiola ‑ Historic
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the northwest)
      • Gladiola is located in Lea County (NM)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Gladiola
    • Tatum
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the northwest)
      • Tatum is located in Lea County (NM)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Tatum
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 829 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Tatum <1>
    • Jones City
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the south)
      • Jones City is located in Lea County (NM)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Jones City

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

Cemeteries Near Higginbotham ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Higginbotham.

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

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

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

  • Denver City Memorial Park
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the northeast)
  • Knowles Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
  • Antioch Baptist Church Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the northwest)
  • Memdry Gardens
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the southwest)
  • Boone Cemetery
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the southwest)
  • Memorial Park
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the southwest)
  • Prairie Haven Cemetery
    (16 miles [25.7 km] to the southwest)
  • Everglades Cemetery
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southwest)
  • Resthaven Cemetery
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Resthaven Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Resthaven Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located outside and to the northeast of Lovington (NM).
    • The Resthaven Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Rest Haven Gardens
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38358 <2>
  • Pleasant Hill Cemetery
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the northeast)
  • Murphys Chapel Cemetery
    (21 miles [33.8 km] to the north)
  • Cox Cemetery
    (21 miles [33.8 km] to the northwest)
  • Continue List   (10 more) ...
    • Lovington Cemetery
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the west)
    • Gaines County Memorial Cemetery
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the southeast)
    • Plains Cemetery
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the northeast)

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

Newspapers Published in Higginbotham ...

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 35 newspapers that have been published in the area around Higginbotham.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Higginbotham, there are papers which were published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<3>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Higginbotham.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first visit the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These 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 Higginbotham:

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>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' (or 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- Higginbotham) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.