How to search newspaper obituaries

Choose the right newspaper

The first step is working out which paper would carry the notice. Families usually place obituaries in the paper that serves the place where the person lived. Many also place one in the paper of a hometown, or of a town where they lived for many years.

• The daily paper for the nearest city.
• A small weekly paper for a town or county, which often prints every local death.
• The paper where grown children live, if the family wants friends there to know.
• Community, faith or language newspapers the person read.

Small weekly papers are easy to overlook, but in rural areas they may be the only paper that prints a notice.

Search a paper’s online obituaries

Most newspapers have an obituaries section on their website. Look for Obituaries in the main menu, or in a section called Local or Life. Many papers use a partner memorial website to run this section, so the page may look different from the rest of the paper’s site.

These sections usually let you search by name and filter by date. As with any small search box, try the last name alone if the full name returns nothing. You can also sort by most recent and scroll back through the last few weeks.

Some papers put part of their website behind a paywall. Obituaries are often left free to read, but if you are blocked, your library may offer free access to the paper.

Paid notices and news obituaries

Newspapers print two main kinds of death notices. Most are paid notices, written by the family or funeral home and placed like an ad. A smaller number are news obituaries, written by a reporter about someone well known in the community.

These can appear in different sections, both in print and online. A news obituary may sit with local news stories rather than on the obituaries page, so if the person was prominent, search the paper’s general news too. Our guide on obituaries and death notices explains the difference in more detail.

Print editions and partner sites

A notice that runs in print does not always appear online in the same way, and the reverse is also true. Some families pay for a short print notice and a longer online version. Others place a notice online only. If you have the print edition, check the obituary page for the days after the death, even if an online search found nothing.

Many newspapers share their obituaries with a partner memorial website. The same notice may then show up on that website, sometimes with a guest book attached. If a newspaper search fails, searching the name on the partner site can find it.

Newspapers that belong to the same company sometimes share notices too. A notice placed in one city’s paper may also appear on the site of a sister paper in a nearby town.

Search older papers in archives

For notices from years ago, you will need an archive. There are a few kinds.

• Paid newspaper archive websites, which hold scanned pages from many papers.
• Free digital collections run by libraries, universities and state historical groups.
• Library databases you can use free with a library card, sometimes from home.
• Microfilm at the local library, for papers that have not been scanned.

Before you pay for any archive, check whether the paper and the years you need are included. Coverage varies a great deal from one paper to the next. Our guide on finding old obituaries goes deeper into libraries and archive options.

Search tips for scanned pages

Archive search works by reading the text on scanned pages with software. That software makes mistakes, especially on old, faded or small print. A name may be read as something close but wrong.

• Set a date range first, then search the last name alone.
• Try spelling mistakes a scanner might make, like an e read as a c.
• Search for a spouse’s name or a street name that would appear in the same notice.
• Older notices often used formal names like Mrs. John Smith, so search the husband’s name too.
• If search fails, browse the obituary pages for the days just after the death.

Ask the newspaper or library

If you cannot find a notice, contact the paper directly. Some newspapers keep an index of past obituaries and can tell you the date it ran. Reference librarians are also very good at this kind of search, and many libraries keep local obituary indexes or clipping files built up over many years.

For a notice that should appear soon, rather than one from the past, checking one paper each day works, but checking several papers along with funeral home pages adds up. An obituary monitoring service can do that daily checking and email you when a matching notice appears. You can read more in how to get notified when someone dies.