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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 Stephens City (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 Stephens City. 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 Stephens City ...

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.

While the name of this town is Stephens City, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Stephens City may originally have been Stephen's City.

Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Stephens City might be written as Stephen City.

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 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.

Stephens City is located in Frederick County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Frederick County: Clarke, Shenandoah, Warren, Berkeley (WV), Hampshire (WV), Hardy (WV) & Morgan (WV).

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

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

Cemeteries Near Stephens City ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Stephens City.

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 Stephens City covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Stephens City, with the one closest to Stephens City 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.<7>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Stephens City had a population of 443 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Stephens City had a population of 2,106 people.

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

  • Vaucluse
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Vaucluse have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Vaucluse
    • Vaucluse is located in Frederick County
  • Canterburg
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Canterburg have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Canterburg
    • Canterburg is located in Frederick County
  • Middletown
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Middletown have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Middletown
    • Middletown is located in Frederick County
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,424 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Middletown <4>
  • Reliance
    (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
  • Opequon
    (5 miles [8 km] to the north)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Opequon have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Opequon
    • Opequon is located in Frederick County
  • Nineveh
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Nineveh have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Nineveh
    • Nineveh is located in Warren County
  • Fawcett Gap
    (5 miles [8 km] to the northwest)
  • Marlboro
    (5 miles [8 km] to the west)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Marlboro have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Marlboro
    • Marlboro is located in Frederick County
  • Meadow Mills
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Meadow Mills have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Meadow Mills
    • Meadow Mills is located in Frederick County
  • Success
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Success have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Success
    • Success is located in Warren County
  • Ashby
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southeast)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for Ashby. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<3>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ashby
    • Ashby is located in Warren County
    • Google driving directions:
    • From your current location to Ashby
    • From Stephens City to Ashby
  • White Post
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the east)
  • Continue List   (16 more) ...
    • Oranda
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Oranda have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Oranda
      • Oranda is located in Shenandoah County
    • Cedarville
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the south)
    • Mount Williams
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northwest)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Mount Williams have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Mount Williams
      • Mount Williams is located in Frederick County

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Stephens City ...

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 68 newspapers that have been published in the area around Stephens City.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Stephens City. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Stephens City and those printed in the larger area surrounding Stephens City.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 11 miles [17.7 km]<5> of Stephens City.

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 Stephens City:

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

The official website for Frederick County: www.co.frederick.va.us/

The official website for State of Virginia: https://www.virginia.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>It's generally believed that possessive apostrophes are removed to prevent confusion on maps where the apostrophe may be confused with a cartographic symbol. While this is generally true, it's not uncommon to find possessive apostrophes in administrative names (such as towns or counties).
<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>An 'estimated' location is one where we have been given GPS coordinates, but are unable to verify the accuracy of those coordinates. That said, we have some confidence that we have placed the marker near the actual location. A typical reason for being unable to verify a location is that it might be on private property or maybe historic and gone without an obvious trace.
<4>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<5>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- Stephens City) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Stephens City. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 39.0831, Longitude: -78.2183       In this case, the coordinates for Stephens City have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<6>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.
<7>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 Stephens City, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 31 Mar 2025