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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 Red Oak (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 Red Oak. 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 Red Oak ...

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: Redoak.

You might be interested in other communities that are also named Red Oak. More information can be found on our Tidbits & Trivia Page for Red Oak.

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

Red Oak is located in Ellis 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 Ellis County: Dallas, Henderson, Hill, Johnson, Kaufman, Navarro & Tarrant.

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

  • Ellis County     (The home county of Red Oak)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Red Oak, with the one closest to Red Oak listed first.
    • Oak Leaf
      (Less than 2 miles to the southwest)
      • Oak Leaf is located in Ellis County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Oak Leaf
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,498 people
    • Pecan Hill
      (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southeast)
      • Pecan Hill is located in Ellis County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Pecan Hill
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 714 people
    • Sterrett
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the south)
    • Sardis
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southwest)
    • Ike
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the south)
    • Waxahachie
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the south)
    • Midlothian
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the west)
    • Boyce
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southeast)
    • Palmer
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southeast)
    • Britton
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the west)
      • Britton is located in Ellis County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Britton
    • Bristol
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the east)
    • Garrett
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the southeast)
      • Garrett is located in Ellis County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Garrett
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 891 people
  • Dallas County
  • Johnson County
  • Kaufman County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Red Oak, with the one closest to Red Oak listed first.
    • Crandall
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the east)
    • Rosser
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the east)
    • Cottonwood
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the east)
      • Cottonwood is located in Kaufman County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cottonwood
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 209 people
    • Scurry
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the east)
    • Forney
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northeast)
    • Grays Prairie
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the east)
      • Grays Prairie is located in Kaufman County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Grays Prairie
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 388 people
    • Talty
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northeast)
      • Talty is located in Kaufman County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Talty
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 2,883 people
    • Lone Star
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the east)
      • Lone Star is located in Kaufman County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lone Star
    • Oak Grove
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the east)
      • Oak Grove is located in Kaufman County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Oak Grove
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 704 people
    • Heath
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northeast)
      • Heath is located in Kaufman County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Heath
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 9,718 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Heath <1>
    • Kaufman
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the east)
    • Post Oak Bend City
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the east)
      • Post Oak Bend City is located in Kaufman County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Post Oak Bend City
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 626 people
  • Navarro County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Red Oak, with the one closest to Red Oak listed first.
    • Rice
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southeast)
    • Cryer Creek ‑ Historic
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the south)
    • Emhouse
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the southeast)
      • Emhouse is located in Navarro County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Emhouse
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 154 people
    • Blooming Grove
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the south)
  • Tarrant County

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

Cemeteries Near Red Oak ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Red Oak.

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 Red Oak - one of the links might be able to help.

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Red Oak, with the one closest to Red Oak 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.<2>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Red Oak had a population of 210 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Red Oak had a population of 14,098 people.

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

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

Newspapers Published in Red Oak ...

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 280 newspapers that have been published in the area around Red Oak.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Red Oak, there are papers which were published within 25 miles [40.2 km]<3>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Red Oak.

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 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 Red Oak:

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>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 Red Oak, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<3>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- Red Oak) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.