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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 Walkers Ford (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 Walkers Ford. 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 Walkers Ford ...

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.

  • A typical abbreviation for Walkers Ford: Walkers Frd.
  • While the name of this community is Walkers Ford, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Walkers Ford may originally have been Walker's Ford.

    Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Walkers Ford might be written as Walker Ford.

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 northwest 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 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 west 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.

Walkers Ford is located in Amherst 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 Amherst County: Appomattox, Bedford, Campbell, Lynchburg City, Nelson & Rockbridge.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Walkers Ford ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Walkers Ford.

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 Walkers Ford covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Walkers Ford, with the one closest to Walkers Ford 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 Walkers Ford had a population of 94 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service.

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

  • Mineral ‑ Historic
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the southeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Mineral have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Mineral
    • Mineral is located in Appomattox County
  • Stapleton
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Stapleton have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Stapleton
    • Stapleton is located in Amherst County
  • Gladstone
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northeast)
  • Bent Creek
    (5 miles [8 km] to the east)
  • Oakville
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Oakville have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Oakville
    • Oakville is located in Appomattox County
  • Greenway
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Greenway have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Greenway
    • Greenway is located in Nelson County
  • Buffalo Springs
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northeast)
  • New Glasgow
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the north)
  • Joshua Falls
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southwest)
  • Tye River
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the north)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Tye River have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Tye River
    • Tye River is located in Nelson County
  • Coolwell
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for Coolwell. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<2>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Coolwell
    • Coolwell is located in Amherst County
    • Google driving directions:
    • From your current location to Coolwell
    • From Walkers Ford to Coolwell
  • Mount Athos ‑ Historic
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Mount Athos have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Mount Athos
    • Mount Athos is located in Campbell County
  • Continue List   (14 more) ...
    • Clifford
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the northwest)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Clifford have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Clifford
      • Clifford is located in Amherst County
    • Norwood
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the northeast)
      • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for Norwood. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<2>
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Norwood
      • Norwood is located in Nelson County
      • Google driving directions:
      • From your current location to Norwood
      • From Walkers Ford to Norwood
    • Arrington
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the north)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Arrington have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Arrington
      • Arrington is located in Nelson County
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Arrington <3>

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

Newspapers Published in Walkers Ford ...

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 103 newspapers that have been published in the area around Walkers Ford.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Walkers Ford, there are papers which were published within 18 miles [29 km]<6>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Walkers Ford.

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 Walkers Ford:

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

The official website for Amherst County: www.countyofamherst.com/

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>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.
<3>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<4>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.
<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.
<6>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Walkers Ford) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Walkers Ford. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 37.5129, Longitude: -78.9281       In this case, the coordinates for Walkers Ford have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<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 Walkers Ford, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 31 Mar 2025