Finding an Obituary

I touched on this in an earlier post, but I wanted to examine the idea further. An obituary or death notice can provide vital information: relationships, birth and marriage dates, locations where the family lived and (most importantly) the names of living relatives. Remember, these sources are not always correct! Still, you may find that "gem" in an obituary... One of the great things about the internet is that (at least since the mid 1990s) newspapers have created extensive archives of their publications. Some sites have even scanned their old records and now have digital collections of their entire history (e.g., New York Times). Most papers can't or won't do that, though, and they have simply posted transcribed text on the web for papers published in the last 20 years. In most cases, it will cost you money to read anything other than the title and first sentence. Here is a list some of the sites I've used:

Google News (check the Archives!)
Highbeam.com
Legacy.com
Library of Congress
Newspaper Archive

OK, now that you know where to look, what can you find? At least one of the sites (legacy.com) makes it easy - their searches are designed for surnames. With the others, you'll need to carefully search to see if the results indicate it is worth spending any money. You can't just rely on typing in your surname and finding data. You would then have to sift through thousands of irrelevant articles, wasting valuable time. Instead, let me recommend that (in addition to the surname) you add the following phrase: "friends and family are invited." These words appear in most obituaries and may help to eliminate ten versions of the story about your Great Uncle Fred fell down in the middle of Fifth Avenue during the parade... Other keyword ideas are "survivors include" and "by his/her beloved wife/husband." Happy hunting!