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Our Genealogical Helper for Brittain ...
So far, we have found very little information about Brittain. The little that we've found leads us believe that the community is historic.<1>
We've added Brittain to our Gazetteer with the hope that we can develop more information. If you can help us with Brittain, please Contact Us.
We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:
- That it be a tool that can help us with planning our trips.
- That it also helps us to understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.
By learning about Brittain (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 insight while doing our genealogical research.
As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this, our Genealogical Helper for Brittain. 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.
It's still very early in our research, but as we gather more information it will be added to this page.
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Newspapers Published in Brittain ...
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 47 newspapers that have been published in the area around Brittain.
Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Brittain, there are papers which were published within 12 miles [19.3 km]<2>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Brittain.
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Cemeteries Near Brittain ...
Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Brittain.
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 click on the [Map] that follows each cemetery's name, a new browser window will open with a Google map showing a satellite view of the area where the cemetery is located. We have tried to place the cemetery in the center of the map, but we're still working on our data and the map might not not be centered properly. If you don't see the cemetery right away, try zooming-in. Usually, but not always, you can see the outline of the cemetery and some of the headstones.
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 Brittain covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.
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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.
Brittain itself is historic and was described in the Rand McNally Atlas as having a population of 22 people in 1895 with a post office and no railroad service.
These communities are listed based on their distance from Brittain, with the one closest to Brittain listed first.
Fetterman [Map] |
- | Located 2 miles [3.2 km] to the South Southeast (SSE) from Brittain |
- | 1895 population of 557 people |
- | Fetterman had a post office and railroad service |
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Valley Falls [Map] |
- | Located 2 miles [3.2 km] to the West Northwest (WNW) from Brittain |
- | 1895 population of 35 people |
- | Valley Falls had a post office and railroad service |
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Pruntytown [Map] |
- | Located 3 miles [4.8 km] to the South Southwest (SSW) from Brittain |
- | 1895 population of 275 people |
- | Pruntytown had a post office and no railroad service |
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West Grafton [Map] |
- | Located 3 miles [4.8 km] to the South Southeast (SSE) from Brittain |
- | 1895 population of 810 people |
- | West Grafton had a post office and no railroad service |
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Grafton [Map] |
- | Located 3 miles [4.8 km] to the Southeast (SE) from Brittain |
- | 1895 population of 3,159 people (with 5,127 people in 2016) |
- | Grafton had a post office and railroad service |
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McGee [Map] |
- | Located 4 miles [6.4 km] to the West Southwest (WSW) from Brittain |
- | McGee had a post office and no railroad service |
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Neel - Historic [Map] |
- | While Neel was mentioned in the 1895 Atlas, it no longer exists |
- | Located 4 miles [6.4 km] to the Northeast (NE) from Brittain |
- | Neel had a post office and no railroad service |
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Samaria [Map] |
- | Located 4 miles [6.4 km] to the North (N) from Brittain |
- | Samaria had a post office and no railroad service |
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Webster [Map] |
- | Located 5 miles [8 km] to the South (S) from Brittain |
- | 1895 population of 225 people |
- | Webster had a post office and railroad service |
We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Brittain. The list can be found on our page for Communities Neighboring Brittain in the 1890's.
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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 hospitals 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. |
Although our information shows that the community of Brittain is historic, it would have been located within present day Taylor County.
The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Taylor County: Barbour, Harrison, Marion, Monongalia & Preston.
Below are the counties that are near Brittain. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Brittain:
For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Brittain, see our County-by-County Page for Brittain.
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Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...
When we do our genealogical research, we start with the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch, the UsGenWeb Project or Genealogy Trails. These websites offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to all and free to view - you should note that they might link to other websites which do charge.
To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Brittain:
These websites are specific to West Virginia:
Website for the West Virginia State Archives
Not to be confused with the official state website, we've found the Digital State Archives website for the State of West Virginia to be a good source for additional links.
These pages are specific to Taylor County:
Genealogy information for nearby counties:
Cemetery Information and Directories for West Virginia:
Of Special Interest ...
The GenDisasters website specializes in newspaper articles about tragedies and disasters. While it makes interesting reading all by itself, it should be of special interest to genealogists and family historians looking for people who were either affected by or directly involved in such tragedies.
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Miscellaneous References and Mentions for Brittain ...
While our initial data for Brittain came from various goverment sources, we have found mention of Brittain in old books and maps. When we do, we'll find a fact here or a snippet there. We've created the following list to keep track of the documents we found useful in adding to our knowledge about Brittain.
We hope that the following list of documents will be of interest to you.
Business Atlas and Shippers' Guide |
Published by Rand McNally & Co. (Document found on Google Books) |
Notes for Brittain: | | Services available at that time (1895): had Post Office, no Railroad mentioned |
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| The GNIS database contains an entry for Brittain. |
See our Misc Page for Brittain for more information. |
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Off-the-Road Links ...
The official website for State of West Virginia: www.wv.gov/
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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 Brittain, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy. - Return to Citation |
<2> | Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance beginning in Brittain. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Brittain) to Point B.
Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Brittain. The point that we are using is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 39.3793, Longitude: -80.0517 [Map]. In this case, the coordinates for Brittain have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).- Return to Citation |
<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. - Return to Citation |
For additional information, please visit our Glossary for Brittain.
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