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Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

So far, we found very little information about Shafter Lake. The little that we've found leads us believe that the community is historic.<1>

We've added Shafter Lake to our Gazetteer with the hope that we can develop more information. If you can help us with Shafter Lake, please Contact Us.

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 Shafter Lake (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 Shafter Lake. 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 Shafter Lake ...

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 have occurred.

For example, a typical abbreviation for Shafter Lake: Shafter Lk.

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 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.

Although our information shows that the community of Shafter Lake is historic, it would have been located within present day Andrews 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 Andrews County: Lea (NM), Ector, Gaines, Martin, Midland & Winkler.

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

  • Andrews County     (The home county of Shafter Lake)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Shafter Lake, with the one closest to Shafter Lake listed first.
    • Florey
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northeast)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Florey
      • Florey is located in Andrews County
    • Frankel City ‑ Historic
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the west)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Frankel City have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Frankel City
      • Frankel City is located in Andrews County
    • Andrews
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
  • Ector County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Shafter Lake, with the one closest to Shafter Lake listed first.
    • Goldsmith
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the south)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Goldsmith have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Goldsmith
      • Goldsmith is located in Ector County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 277 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Goldsmith <3>
    • Scharbauer City
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the southeast)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Scharbauer City have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Scharbauer City
      • Scharbauer City is located in Ector County
  • Gaines County
    • Seminole
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the north)
  • Lea County (NM)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Shafter Lake, with the one closest to Shafter Lake listed first.
    • Jones City
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the west)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Jones City have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Jones City
      • Jones City is located in Lea County (NM)
    • Eunice
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the west)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Eunice
      • Eunice is located in Lea County (NM)
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 3,049 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Eunice <3>
    • Maypens
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the west)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Maypens
      • Maypens is located in Lea County (NM)

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Shafter Lake ...

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 11 newspapers that have been published in the area around Shafter Lake.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Shafter Lake. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Shafter Lake and those printed in the larger area surrounding Shafter Lake.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 28 miles [45.1 km]<4> of Shafter Lake.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we begin 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 Shafter Lake:

Cemeteries Near Shafter Lake ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Shafter Lake.

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 Shafter Lake covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

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

  • Shafter Lake Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the south)
  • Andrews Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Andrews Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located outside and to the southwest of Andrews.
    • The Andrews Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Andrews County Cemetery
    • Old Andrews Cemetery
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Andrews Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #240561 <5>
  • Andrews West Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
  • Andrews North Cemetery
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
  • Gaines County Cemetery
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the north)
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Gaines County Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located outside and to the south of Seminole.
    • The Gaines County Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Gaines County South Cemetery
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Gaines County Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2218389 <5>
  • Gaines County Memorial Cemetery
    (24 miles [38.6 km] to the north)

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

The official website for Andrews County: www.co.andrews.tx.us/

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

Footnotes ...

<1>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 Shafter Lake, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<2>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.
<3>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<4>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 from Point A (ie- Shafter Lake) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Shafter Lake. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 32.4046, Longitude: -102.6660       In this case, the coordinates for Shafter Lake have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<5>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.




 

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In closing, please keep in mind that we can not guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of the information on this website, so use with care. We encourage you to double-check the information that is critical to you.

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This page was last modified/updated: 07 Apr 2024