Record guide

Obituaries and death notices

An obituary or death notice can name a person's spouse, children, birthplace and funeral; to find one, first pin down the date and place of death, then search every nearby paper.

An obituary can be the one record that ties a whole family together on a single page: the spouse, the children with their married names and towns, the brothers and sisters, the church, and sometimes the place the person was born. Death notices are shorter, but they can still give a date, an age and the funeral arrangements.

Finding one takes more method than luck. Old newspapers are not all online, many are searched page by page on microfilm, and not everyone had an obituary at all. This guide explains what kinds of notices to expect, how to find the right paper and date, and how to read what you find. Our newspapers guide covers older death notices and abbreviations such as inst. and ult.

Obituary or death notice?

Librarians separate the two. The Boston Public Library explains that obituaries are usually written by newspaper staff and tend to be longer, while death notices are classified items placed in the paper, usually by a family member, and tend to be shorter. The difference matters when you search an index or database, because death notices are sometimes left out of them.

What an obituary contains changed over time. The same guide notes that older obituaries, from the early 1900s and before, usually give less information than modern ones, because they served mainly to announce the death and the funeral. Later obituaries became both a notice and a tribute, with more about the person's life and family.

Start with the date and place of death

Because so many newspapers must still be searched by date, the first job is to find out when and where the person died. A death certificate is the obvious source, but the Boston Public Library reminds researchers that a death record can also be an obituary index or a church record, and that grave listings usually give at least a partial death date. For deaths reported to Social Security, the Social Security Death Index can give a date and a last residence.

If you have no idea where someone died, census returns and city directories can show where the family was living, which narrows the search. The closer you get to an exact date, the fewer issues you need to read.

Which newspapers to search

Expect to look in more than one paper. A city might have had several newspapers at once, and a death could be reported in a neighboring town, especially a larger one nearby. Most obituaries appeared near the place of death, but a family sometimes placed one in the person's hometown as well, so search where the person grew up or lived earlier.

Think about the communities your ancestor belonged to. The Library of Congress points to collections of African American newspapers, Spanish-language papers printed in the United States, American Jewish newspapers, and ethnic papers, some in languages other than English, for communities such as Czech, German, Italian, Polish and Welsh Americans. A death ignored by the English-language daily may be reported in an ethnic or foreign-language paper.

Searching online and on microfilm

Digitized newspapers can usually be searched by word, while microfilm must be read page by page. The Library of Congress notes that not nearly every newspaper ever published has been or will be digitized, and that finding out whether a title is online often means checking several sources. Chronicling America, its free site, has historic pages through 1963.

Online, search by name but also by place and date, and try spelling variants and initials. On microfilm, the Boston Public Library suggests starting with the issue for the day of death and reading several days after it. If the paper has an index on an early page, it shows where deaths or obituaries appear; if not, read slowly through the whole issue, because older papers had no separate obituary section and fitted notices in wherever there was room.

When there is no obituary

Not everyone had one. The Boston Public Library notes that obituaries become scarcer the further back you go before the 1950s, and that in the early 1900s and before they were mostly for well-known people. A weekly paper might skip a death if the funeral took place before the next issue. During a war or a big news event, obituaries could be crowded out or delayed, and news of a soldier's death could take weeks, months or even years to reach the family.

Look for other kinds of coverage. A sudden death, such as an accident, may appear as a news story instead. The Library of Congress observes that newsworthy items range widely in columns of personal mentions and rural correspondents, which may note a person's illness, social calls or travel.

Reading an obituary with care

Treat an obituary as a lead, not proof. Whoever supplied the facts was doing so soon after a death, and ages, birthplaces and dates of arrival are easy to get wrong. The Library of Congress advises researchers to consider each article's content and to look for other records that confirm or contradict its details.

Read the list of survivors slowly. Married daughters and sisters may appear only under a husband's name, as Mrs. Frank Hale, so note each one and search for her marriage. A child listed in one town and missing from the next census may have moved there. A phrase such as preceded in death by, or a remark that the deceased was the widow of a named man, can give you a death you did not know about.

On the page, look for

Find the exact or approximate date and place of death first.
List every newspaper published in or near that place at that time, including weeklies and foreign-language papers.
Search the issues from the day of death through at least the following week.
Look for both a death notice and an obituary, and for a later news item or card of thanks.
Copy the full text, with the paper's name, date and page.
Write down every relative named, with each town given.
Note married women listed under a husband's name and search for their marriages.
Record the funeral home, church, cemetery and any society or union named.
Check each fact against vital records, census returns and gravestones.

Where to see them for free

Chronicling America, the free Library of Congress newspaper site, for digitized historic pages through 1963.
Public and university libraries, which hold local newspapers on microfilm and often offer free access to commercial newspaper databases with a library card.
Library obituary indexes, such as the Boston Public Library's Boston Obituary Database, which indexes the Boston Evening Transcript, Boston Globe and Boston Herald and tells you where and when a notice appeared.
FamilySearch, free with an account, which includes some obituary indexes, and subscription newspaper sites.

Sources

How to cite this page

Daily Ancestor. "Obituaries and death notices." Record guides. https://dailyancestor.com/records/obituaries. Last checked 2026-10-10.