How to get obituary alerts for a city

Why follow a whole city

Some people want to know about every death in a place, not just one person. You might have grown up in a small town and want to keep up with neighbors and teachers. You might run a church, a club or a local business. Or you might simply want to know when someone in your community passes so you can send a card.

There is no single feed that lists every obituary in a city. Instead, you build your own set of sources and check them, or have them come to you. The steps below show how.

Start with the local funeral homes

Nearly every obituary starts at a funeral home. Make a list of the funeral homes that serve your city and the towns around it. Include homes a short drive away, since families often choose one outside city limits.

Once you have the list, visit each home’s website and look for these options:

• An email sign-up for new obituaries, which some funeral home websites offer.
• A public social media page where new notices are shared.
• An obituaries page you can bookmark and check on a set day.

Follow the local newspaper

Most local papers run an obituary section, in print and online. Some publish every day, while smaller weeklies bunch notices together once a week. Paid obituaries and short death notices both appear there.

Check whether the paper offers an email newsletter for obituaries or a daily digest. If it has an online edition, bookmark the obituary page directly so you do not have to dig through the site each time. Our guide on searching newspaper obituaries has more tips.

Keep in mind that not every family pays for a newspaper notice. Some only post on the funeral home site, so the paper alone will miss some deaths.

Memorial sites and community pages

Large memorial websites collect notices from many funeral homes and newspapers. Many let you browse by state and city, and some offer email updates for an area. They are a handy way to see a lot of notices in one place, though coverage differs from town to town.

Community groups on social media can also be a quick, informal source. Local groups often share news of a death before a formal notice is posted. Treat these posts with some care, since details can be wrong until the family or funeral home confirms them.

Libraries, churches and senior centers sometimes keep their own lists or bulletin boards as well.

Keep it manageable

Following a whole city can bring more notices than you expect, especially in a large metro area. A few habits help:

• Pick one or two sources as your main check and use the rest as backups.
• Set a regular day and time to review new notices.
• Use your browser’s find feature to scan each page for familiar last names.
• Set up an email folder or filter for obituary newsletters so they do not crowd your inbox.

For a small town this can take a few minutes a week. For a big city it can easily become a daily chore.

Following a city or following names

If what you really care about is a handful of people in that city, following every notice may be more work than you need. It can be simpler to watch for specific names instead.

The Passings is built around names. You add the people you care about along with their city and state, and we check funeral homes, newspapers and memorial sites every day, then email you when a matching obituary appears. You can see the steps in how it works, or read our guide on tracking obituaries for several people.

Many people combine both approaches, browsing the local paper for general news while relying on name alerts for the people who matter most.