Obituaries

Obituaries can be an extremely valuable source of information on your ancestors. Beware of the fact that the obit is as reliable as the person who provided the details.


Some early newspapers had obituary sections. Others fit them in in local news sections or personals. Modern newspapers have the obit section. Many obits are posted online via newspaper indexes or local library indexes.


You may run into death notices rather than obituaries. If all you need is the date and place of death, then you're in good shape. Small town papers may have more detailed articles than larger locales.


When you are looking for an obit, narrow down the date as much as possible. Searching all of the May 1900 papers beats searching all of the 1900 papers! If you have a date [i.e. May 1, 1888], start with that issue and search ahead about a week. If the paper is a weekly, check the week after the death - for starters. The same would hold for a bi-weekly.


What can you find in the obituary?  The ideal obits will give you the name of the deceased, birth information, date/place of death, spouse, marriage, number of children with names, siblings, occupation, some biographical data, place and time of funeral. Shorter obits: name, age, spouse, birthplace, residence, survivors, funeral details.

Verify all of the details that you can with other sources. The informant could have been wrong! Also take some of the flowery prose included in the small town papers with a grain of salt. After reading a few of my family members' obits, I felt I should have submitted them for sainthood.


If the obit gives the names of children and siblings, then you may have some new leads to follow on the family.


I will close with a mystery. I found Rufus Jennison's obit and funeral notices in the 1864 Indianapolis papers. All other records state that he died in 1862. I guess ol' Rufus wanted to stretch things out as long as possible.