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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
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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 Philippi (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 Philippi. 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 Philippi ...

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.

In past government published Postal Guides, Philippi was referred to as Philippi Courthouse.

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

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.

For more information about how community names might have been affected by the Board of Geographic Names (BGN), see our page about Placename Rules.

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.

Philippi is located in Barbour County and is the County Seat.

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 Barbour County: Harrison, Preston, Randolph, Taylor, Tucker & Upshur.

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

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

Cemeteries Near Philippi ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Philippi.

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 Philippi - one of the links might be able to help.

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

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

  • Masonic Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the north)
  • Norris Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the north)
  • Mt. Olive Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the northwest)
  • Old Quaker Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the northwest)
  • Silent Grove Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the southeast)
  • Olive Hill Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the east)
  • Welch Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the east)
  • Taylor Drain Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the north)
  • Jerusalem Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the southeast)
  • Pitman Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the south)
  • Pleasant Grove Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southwest)
  • Booth Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
  • Continue List   (355 more) ...
    • Fairview Cemetery
      (5 miles [8 km] to the northeast)
    • Mt. Tabor Cemetery
      (5 miles [8 km] to the northwest)
    • Nutter Cemetery
      (5 miles [8 km] to the west)

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>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Philippi had a population of 378 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Philippi had a population of 3,239 people.

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

  • Elk City
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
  • Vannoys Mill
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the east)
  • Arden
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northeast)
  • Calhoun
    (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
  • Kalamazoo
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the east)
  • Clemtown
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northeast)
  • Pleasant Creek ‑ Historic
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the north)
  • Pepper
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the west)
  • Meadowville
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the east)
    • Meadowville is located in Barbour County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Meadowville
  • Nestorville
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the east)
    • Nestorville is located in Barbour County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Nestorville
  • Simpson
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the north)
    • Simpson is located in Taylor County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Simpson
  • Wilmoth ‑ Historic
    (8 miles [12.9 km] to the south)
    • Wilmoth is located in Barbour County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Wilmoth
  • Continue List   (14 more) ...
    • Flora ‑ Historic
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
      • Flora is located in Barbour County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Flora
    • Huffman ‑ Historic
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
      • Huffman is located in Barbour County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Huffman
    • Cecil
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the north)
      • Cecil is located in Taylor County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cecil

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

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Philippi ...

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 56 newspapers that have been published in the area around Philippi.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Philippi. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Philippi and those printed in the larger area surrounding Philippi.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 14 miles [22.5 km]<4> of Philippi.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first turn to 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 Philippi:

Footnotes ...

<1>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<2>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.
<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 Philippi, 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' (or point-to-point) distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Philippi) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.