Top five ways to search Newspaper Obituaries

An obituary is a notification of a person’s death that is published in a newspaper. To announce a death, family members or the funeral home often post an obituary in the local newspaper. If you’re looking for an ancient obituary but don’t want to pay a charge, there are many methods to obtain them, from recent deaths to centuries ago. However, it will need some effort due to the scarcity of free obituary archives.

Locators of Online Obituaries

There are options for looking for free obituaries if you’re prepared to invest some time and/or provide your credit card information for a free trial. From newspapers to internet sites, if you have the correct information, you should be able to locate practically anyone’s archived obituary with some investigation.

Conduct a search of local newspapers for obituaries and death notices.

Almost every newspaper’s website has obituaries. However, since some sites only maintain obituary information available for six months or less, this approach may be useful mainly for recent deaths. If you’re unclear of the name of the newspaper (or newspapers) in the deceased’s hometown, visit Obituaries.com, which gives direct connections to the obituary pages of hundreds of newspapers nationwide and in numerous English-speaking nations.

Obituaries.com

To do an obituary search on the site, enter the individual’s first and last names in the top-of-the-page search bar, followed by the nation of death. The search may be reduced further by state (Australia and the United States), province (Canada), region (New Zealand), county (England, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, and Scotland), or island (the Bahamas). After locating the proper newspaper, you may do an online search of its online obituary records by visiting the newspaper’s website.

Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com is a searchable database that contains a variety of various sorts of documents, ranging from obituaries to census records and ship manifests. The site has a “Birth, Marriage, and Death” search option. Enter as much information as possible about the deceased, and the service will generate a list of probable matches. The search results may be filtered further to include just “Death, Burial, Cemetery, and Obituaries.”

Free Trial of Ancestry

It’s critical to keep in mind that Ancestry.com only provides a two-week free trial to new users. The free trial, on the other hand, gives you complete access to any results returned by your search, as well as the opportunity to print copies for your records. Simply remember to terminate your trial; else, it will not be free. For the free trial, you must provide them with your credit card information.

Tributes.com

Tributes.com provides a free obituary search using just the last name. The website begins with data from the Social Security Administration (birthdate, death date, and city of residency at the time of death) and then connects to other websites where readers may access copies of newspaper obituaries. It’s a fantastic place to start if you have little information and haven’t found anything with a basic Internet search.

Legacy.com

Legacy.com has over 200 million obituaries from more than 900 publications worldwide. To find an obituary, enter the deceased’s first and last names in the upper right-hand corner of the page’s search box. You may further refine your search by specifying the nation and/or state of residence of the deceased. This is an excellent method for locating newspaper obituaries. However, since the site does not archive obituaries, your search may return no results if the person you’re searching for did not have an obituary published in one of the newspapers featured on the site.

Mennonite Historical Archives

The Mennonite Archives contains obituaries for Mennonites going all the way back to 1884. Obituaries are alphabetized by last name, maiden name, and year of death. Consider yourself fortunate if the person you’re searching for was a Mennonite! It simplifies the process of locating a free obituary.

Obituaries from Colonial Virginia

Old Virginia Obituaries is a collection of obituaries from historical newspapers published in Virginia between 1790 and 1940. The webpage is alphabetized by surname. To find an obituary, click on the first letter of the deceased’s surname in the left-hand column.

Databases of National Obituaries

The United States does not keep an obituary database, but Canada does. Citizens of Canada may get death notifications on the Canadian site; residents of the United States can contact their state or county authorities for death certificate photos or information.

Internet Exploration

While websites devoted to obituaries and historical records may sometimes provide excellent, in-depth information, don’t overlook a basic Internet search using Google or another search engine. If you know the person’s entire name, you may obtain some extremely useful results by putting “(Full name) obituary” into the search engine. The advantage of this is that you may see a list of results from many websites and determine which one has the information you’re searching for.

Obituary Searches Using Offline Sources

If your web search is unsuccessful, there are still more locations where you may locate an old obituary.

Library publique

If you reside in the same neighborhood as the individual whose obituary you’re looking for, you may visit your local library. Local and regional newspapers are often subscribed to by libraries, which retain physical copies for many weeks or longer.

To locate an obituary from years ago, contact the library for assistance in searching through past issues of newspapers. Older issues are accessible on microfilm, which may be viewed on a microfilm machine at the library. Due to the fact that the microfilm cannot be taken from the library, bring a pen and paper with you to record your discoveries.

The Family History Library of the Mormon Church

As part of its genealogical research endeavors, the Mormon Church has amassed a wealth of material, including obituaries. The public may access this material at the church’s Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the world’s biggest genealogy library, with over 2.4 million rolls of microfilm, 742,000 microfiche documents, 310,000 volumes, and hundreds of electronic data. Librarians can assist you in doing an obituary search by guiding you to the right resource. If you are unable to visit Salt Lake City, you may be able to get the information you want via your local Family History Center.

How to Begin Your Obituary Search

Gather as much information on the dead as possible before starting your search for an obituary. This will assist in narrowing your search and making it more fruitful. It will assist if you are familiar with at least one or two of the following facts:

For women, whole name, including maiden name

Birthdate and place of origin

Death date and place

Employment locations

Dates of attendance at schools

Acquired degrees

Members of the immediate family or next of kin, such as the spouse, children, grandkids, parents, and siblings

Cemetery in which he is buried

Arrangements for burial

A Connection to the Past

Obituaries serve an immediate function by notifying friends and relatives of a deceased person’s death and alerting them about the memorial ceremony or funeral. Nevertheless, many people enjoy researching old obituaries in order to fill in gaps in their family history. When a family member invests the time and effort to learn more about a relative from decades ago, it leaves a lovely legacy for future generations. Regardless of why you’re looking for an obituary, there are a number of reasonably simple and affordable methods available.