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 Santa Margarita (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 Santa Margarita. 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 and doctors 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.
Santa Margarita is located in Starr 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 Starr County: Brooks, Hidalgo, Jim Hogg & Zapata.
Below are the counties that are near Santa Margarita. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Santa Margarita:
- Starr County (The home county of Santa Margarita)
- The following are listed by their distance from Santa Margarita, with the one closest to Santa Margarita listed first.
- Salineno
(2 miles [3.2 km] to the northwest)
- Falcon Heights
(4 miles [6.4 km] to the northwest)
- Falcon Village
(5 miles [8 km] to the northwest)
- Falcon Village is located in Starr County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Falcon Village
- Fronton
(5 miles [8 km] to the south)
- Fronton is located in Starr County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Fronton
- Roma Creek
(6 miles [9.7 km] to the southeast)
- Roma Creek is located in Starr County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Roma Creek
- Roma
(7 miles [11.3 km] to the southeast)
- Roma is located in Starr County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Roma
- Population from the 2020 Census: 11,476 people
- Roma has also been known as:
- Roma - Los Saenz
- Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Roma <1>
- North Escobares
(8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
- North Escobares is located in Starr County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for North Escobares
- Escobares
(9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
- Escobares is located in Starr County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Escobares
- Estimated population in 2015: 2,451 people
- Garceno
(11 miles [17.7 km] to the southeast)
- Garceno is located in Starr County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Garceno
- La Rosita
(12 miles [19.3 km] to the southeast)
- La Rosita is located in Starr County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for La Rosita
- Miguel Barrera
(12 miles [19.3 km] to the southeast)
- Miguel Barrera is located in Starr County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Miguel Barrera
- Miguel Barrera has also been known as:
- Miguel Barrera Colonia
- Los Alvarez
(13 miles [20.9 km] to the southeast)
- Los Alvarez is located in Starr County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Los Alvarez
- Jim Hogg County
- Guerra
(29 miles [46.7 km] to the northeast)
- Zapata County
- The following are listed by their distance from Santa Margarita, with the one closest to Santa Margarita listed first.
- New Falcon
(10 miles [16.1 km] to the north)
- New Falcon is located in Zapata County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for New Falcon
- New Falcon has also been known as:
- New Falcon Colonia
- Lopeno
(15 miles [24.1 km] to the north)
- Morales - Sanchez
(19 miles [30.6 km] to the north)
- Morales - Sanchez is located in Zapata County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Morales - Sanchez
- Morales - Sanchez has also been known as:
- Morales - Sanchez Colonia
- Siesta Shores
(27 miles [43.5 km] to the north)
- Siesta Shores is located in Zapata County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Siesta Shores
- Falcon Lake Estates
(28 miles [45.1 km] to the north)
- Falcon Lake Estates is located in Zapata County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Falcon Lake Estates
- Falcon Mesa
(28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)
- Falcon Mesa is located in Zapata County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Falcon Mesa
- Zapata
(30 miles [48.3 km] to the north)
For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Santa Margarita, see our County-by-County Page for Santa Margarita.
Cemeteries Near Santa Margarita ...
Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Santa Margarita.
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 Santa Margarita - one of the links might be able to help.
If not found below, our Cemetery List for Santa Margarita covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.
The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Santa Margarita, with the one closest to Santa Margarita listed first.
- Los Arrierous Cemetery
(Less than 2 miles to the north)
- Chapeno Cemetery
(4 miles [6.4 km] to the northwest)
- Cementerio San Antonio de Escobares Cemetery
(9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
- Garcia Cemetery
(13 miles [20.9 km] to the northeast)
- Elizondo Cemetery
(13 miles [20.9 km] to the northeast)
- Los Garzas Cemetery
(14 miles [22.5 km] to the southeast)
- Agua Dulce Cemetery
(15 miles [24.1 km] to the northeast)
- Una de Gato Cemetery
(17 miles [27.4 km] to the northeast)
- Buena Vista Cemetery
(17 miles [27.4 km] to the northeast)
- Olmos Cemetery
(21 miles [33.8 km] to the southeast)
- Garcia Cemetery
(23 miles [37 km] to the north)
- Manuel Benavides Garcia Cemetery
(23 miles [37 km] to the north)
- Garciasville Cemetery
(27 miles [43.5 km] to the southeast)
- Zapata Cemetery
(29 miles [46.7 km] to the northwest)
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 Santa Margarita in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Santa Margarita.
These communities are listed based on their distance from Santa Margarita, with the one closest to Santa Margarita listed first.
- Roma
(7 miles [11.3 km] to the southeast)
- Roma is located in Starr County
- Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Roma
- Population from the 2020 Census: 11,476 people
- Roma has also been known as:
- Roma - Los Saenz
- Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Roma <1>
- Rio Grande City
(18 miles [29 km] to the southeast)
We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Santa Margarita. See our List of 1890's Communities around Santa Margarita.
Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Santa Margarita ...
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 6 newspapers that have been published in the area around Santa Margarita.
We have organized these newspapers into two lists:
- A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Santa Margarita. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Santa Margarita and those printed in the larger area surrounding Santa Margarita.
- An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 18 miles [29 km]<2> of Santa Margarita.
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 Santa Margarita:
- Websites specific to Texas
- Pages specific to Starr County
- Genealogy information for nearby counties
- Jim Hogg County
- Zapata County
- Cemetery Information and Directories for Texas
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> | 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- Santa Margarita) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'. |
| <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 Santa Margarita, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy. |