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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of West Virginia >> Upshur County >> Beans Mill >> Genealogy HelperIndex...

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 Beans Mill (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 Beans Mill. 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 Beans Mill ...

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 occur.

  • A typical abbreviation for Beans Mill: Beans Ml. (or less commonly used: Beans Mll.)
  • While the name of this community is Beans Mill, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Beans Mill may originally have been Bean's Mill.

    Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Beans Mill might be written as Bean Mill.

You might be interested in other communities that are also named Beans Mill. More information can be found on our Tidbits & Trivia Page for Beans Mill.

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 southeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors were in the next county to the east. 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 east 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.

Beans Mill is located in Upshur County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Upshur County: Barbour, Harrison, Lewis, Randolph & Webster.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Beans Mill ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Beans Mill.

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 Beans Mill - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

  • Alton Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the southwest)
  • Chapel Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the east)
  • Tenmile Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the northeast)
  • Marple Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southwest)
  • Maher Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the east)
  • Lanham Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the east)
  • Mt. Zion Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southwest)
  • Pleasant Dale Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southwest)
  • Ross Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
  • Brooks Hill Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
  • Mt. Olive Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
  • Simmons Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the east)
  • Continue List   (248 more) ...
    • Long Run Cemetery
      (5 miles [8 km] to the east)
    • Mt. Carmel Cemetery
      (5 miles [8 km] to the north)
    • Pine Grove Cemetery
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the south)

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.<3>

While we didn't find Beans Mill in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Beans Mill.

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

  • Alton
    (Less than 2 miles to the southwest)
  • Sellers ‑ Historic
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the north)
    • Sellers is located in Upshur County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sellers
  • Alexander
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the south)
  • Queens
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the northeast)
  • Evergreen
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Evergreen is located in Upshur County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Evergreen
  • Hemlock
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southeast)
    • Hemlock is located in Upshur County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Hemlock
  • Holly Grove
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southwest)
    • Holly Grove is located in Upshur County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Holly Grove
  • Selbyville
    (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
    • Selbyville is located in Upshur County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Selbyville
  • Sago
    (5 miles [8 km] to the north)
  • Palace Valley
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
    • Palace Valley is located in Upshur County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Palace Valley
  • Kedron
    (5 miles [8 km] to the northeast)
    • Kedron is located in Upshur County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Kedron
  • Tallmansville
    (5 miles [8 km] to the north)
  • Continue List   (14 more) ...
    • French Creek
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northwest)
    • Gaines
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
      • Gaines is located in Upshur County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Gaines
    • Canaan
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southwest)
      • Canaan is located in Upshur County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Canaan

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

Newspapers Published in Beans Mill ...

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 15 newspapers that have been published in the area around Beans Mill.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Beans Mill, there are papers which were published within 11 miles [17.7 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Beans Mill.

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 helpful 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 Beans Mill:

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>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<3>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 Beans Mill, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<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- Beans Mill) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.