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The Commemorative Quarter for Texas





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 Rita (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 Rita. 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 doctors and 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.

Santa Rita is located in Reagan County.

To see how the shape of Texas' counties have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Reagan County: Crockett, Irion, Midland, Sterling & Upton.

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

  • Reagan County     (The home county of Santa Rita)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Santa Rita, with the one closest to Santa Rita listed first.
    • Texon ‑ Historic
      (Less than 2 miles to the west)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Texon have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Texon
      • Texon is located in Reagan County
    • Best ‑ Historic
      (2 miles [3.2 km] to the east)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Best
      • Best is located in Reagan County
    • Big Lake
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the east)
    • Stiles ‑ Historic
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the north)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Stiles have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Stiles
      • Stiles is located in Reagan County
  • Irion County
  • Pecos County
    • Iraan
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the southwest)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Iraan have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Iraan
      • Iraan is located in Pecos County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,221 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Iraan <2>
  • Upton County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Santa Rita, with the one closest to Santa Rita listed first.
    • Rankin
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the west)
    • Midkiff
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the north)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Midkiff have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Midkiff
      • Midkiff is located in Upton County
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Midkiff <2>

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

Cemeteries Near Santa Rita ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Santa Rita.

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.

If you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our selection of Genealogy Websites (see below).

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

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

  • Glenrest Cemetery
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the east)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Glenrest Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Glenrest Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located in Big Lake.
    • The Glenrest Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Glen Rest Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #3816 <3>
  • Stiles Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the northeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Stiles Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Stiles Cemetery is located less than 2 miles<4> to the north of Stiles.
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #7094 <3>
  • Rankin Cemetery
    (15 miles [24.1 km] to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Rankin Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Rankin Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Memory Garden Cemetery
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the southwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Memory Garden Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Memory Garden Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Restland Cemetery
    (26 miles [41.8 km] to the southwest)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Restland Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Restland Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Reagan View Cemetery
    (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Reagan View Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Reagan View Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Rest Haven Cemetery
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the east)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Rest Haven Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Rest Haven Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.

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

Newspapers Published in Santa Rita ...

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 Santa Rita.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Santa Rita, there are papers which were published within 25 miles [40.2 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Santa Rita.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we like to start with 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 Santa Rita:

Unfortunately, we don't know of a website for Santa Rita. If you can help, please contact us through our Feedback Page.

The official website for State of Texas: https://texas.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>The location has been supplied by the Geographic Names Information System - which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). While these values should be definitive, we found that accuracy can vary and you should double-check the location if accuracy is required.
<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>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Santa Rita) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Santa Rita. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 31.2235, Longitude: -101.6571       In this case, the coordinates for Santa Rita have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 29 Apr 2025