Search for Obituaries & Death Records
(the smart way)
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Search for recent & old obituaries without wasting time on amateur databases and useless obituary archives. There are Millions of obituaries online but only few databases are worth your time. Gov-Resources.com , GenealogyBank.com & NewspaperArchive.com proved to be the leading sources for obituaries and death records searches. |
Following is a quick review of all three:
- Gov-Resources.com: My absolute favorite for obituaries searches. Their obituaries resources and death records databases are second to none! You can use their databases to immediately discover the reason behind anyone's death, burial location, funeral information and also get access to powerful birth, marriage & divorce records databases – with no extra fee. Read more...
- GenealogyBank.com: My second choice in this category, and another great resource for U.S. genealogy collection, with powerful databases for death records, access to historical newspapers and obituaries and other good sources for historical documents. Overall - GenealogyBank.com is a very good resource, especially for historical records & documents. Read more...
- NewspaperArchive.com:
NewspaperArchive is a good resource for digitized images of old newspaper pages from 1759 to present.
You can search newspapers in their archives by keyword and date, making it easy to quickly explore
historical content. If you really care about viewing the original image of an
obituary - NewspaperArchive will
be your best bet. Otherwise - I would still choose
Gov-Resources.com as the most powerful resource for obituaries & other
death related searches. Read more...
There are other websites that offer "free" obituaries search. Some of them use the word "free" just as a teaser. Some do let you search free but provide very poor results.
If you are serious about finding an obituary and discovering a lot of unknown data about the deceased, I would encourage you to save time and headaches and use a professional database.
You can start searching for obituaries in each of the following states:
What can be found in a powerful obituaries database?
Instead of wasting precious time browsing thru newspaper websites that get you nowhere, or trying to spot an obituary by manually searching the entire cyberspace of billions of unorganized pages - a powerful database can help you spot an obituary with a single click of a mouse.
The professional resources invest millions of dollars to compile massive amounts
of death records and burial listings, so
that people like you and me will be able to find records of death - within
minutes.
A search for obituaries in a powerful database may lead you to the following
information:
- The e full name of the deceased, including maiden names.
- The date of birth and death of the deceased.
- The residence of the individual before death.
- The descendant's next of kin.
- The descendant's cause of death.
- Biography of the deceased’s life.
- The descendant's surviving family members
- Overview of the deceased’s life, including military service, education, work background, interests and other accomplishments.
- General information regarding the funeral, including the date, time, location, and internment.
- And much much more...
How to perform a free obituaries search?
If you prefer trying your luck using Google or manually browsing thru specific newspaper websites or other free obituaries indexes - here are some advanced search tips that will sweeten the pill and make the searching quest easier:- If you know the publication where the obituary was probably printed then you should try and visit the official website of that publication and run a search for the obituary just on that site.
- If you don't have any clue about where the obituary was printed – use the following Google advanced search tactics in order to search billions of pages for that specific obituary, including newspaper's sites.
- Google News: First, try locating the obit on official newspaper websites. Even if it's an old obituary - It's worth a shot. So go to Google Newsws and run whatever search you were thinking about – from there. This is a great way to search thru only newspaper pages, so give it a shot before anything else.
- Google Archive Search: If the search got you nowhere – go to Google Archive Search and run your searches from there. Although You'll need to pay around 3.95$ to view the entire obit - if you find it, it's still a great tool to trace the beginning sentence of obituaries, so you can use it for that purpose and only pay if you think there's a match.
- other variations of the deceased name: You should try typing other variations of the deceased's name, abbreviations & misspellings. Sometimes only an initial is used e.g. Alex for Alexander, Liz for Elizabeth, etc.. etc.. so be creative and try all variations you can think of when you run your searches.
- Use the command "inurl" as follows: run a search - {inurl:obituaries "James Smith" died 1987} – this will search all pages that the word "obituaries" appear inside the URL, and that contain {"James Smith" died 1987} somewhere inside the page. Try doing the same with inurl:genealogy, inural:news, inurl:index, inurl:archive, etc.. etc..
- Use the (-) sign to exclude unwanted keywords from the search. e.g. ("John Kennedy" obituary -president -f). Exclude any word that you think is not relevant to your search, based upon your initial searches.
Google search tip: if, for instance, the name of the newspaper is chicagotribune.com, then type into Google – {site:chicagotribune.com "James Smith" obituary} or {inurl:chicagotribune "James Smith" obituary} to search for "James Smith" obituary just on the Chicago tribune site. You may be able to track the relevant obituary free of charge that way.
Note: the older the obituary is – the less chance you'll be able to get it for free on the newspaper's site.
Offline Obituaries Search – the missing 5%
Even if you use a very powerful database to effectively search for obituaries, death records and other genealogical info online, you may still need to do some further research as some records may still not be available online and there might still be some missing pieces of information.
A Good example is that of funeral home records:
I did succeed in finding the burial place of my gr-grandfather and also some great insights about his life story from his obituary, but trying to dig information from the funeral home that ran the ceremony (that meanwhile was out of business) was a little tougher mission.
I first had to trace the name of the funeral home that took over the old one, and then write a polite letter with as many details as I could in order to make these guys accept my genealogy request and provide details.
Both these missions I did not succeed completing using any online database, although I did use these databases to get many valuable hints to help me trace the relevant funeral home.
There are other advantages for not being lazy and following the info you retrieved from online databases. Such is the case when, for instance, you located the cemetery where you ancestor is buried, thru their obituary, and you found a transcription of his epitaph online.
Many genealogists will be satisfied with only that, yet you can find much more about your ancestor by paying a visit to their grave. (e.g. finding symbols of a your ancestor's religion and their club affiliations, finding other family plots nearby, and even finding your ancestor's photograph set right in the tombstone under some type of unbreakable glass).
So don't stop online. After finding what you need about your ancestors using powerful databases, and even if you think you already found everything you need – give the offline world a chance and you might be surprised.
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