Newspaper Obituaries On The Net

Newspaper Obituaries are a rich source of information for family historians.

Obituaries are mini biographies that form a memorial tribute to a person's life.

One key to searching successfully for  obituaries is to have correct information about your ancestor's death. The death certificate forms the foundation for a successful obituary lookup. If you do not already have one, contact details for obtaining death certificates for each state are at vitalrecordsonline.net

Obituaries often identify relationships of the deceased as sibling, child, grandparent, parent etc., to numerous other individuals. Obituaries may even suggest other documentation of an individual's death - church or cemetery records (by identifying the place of burial or the officiating minister); a death certificate in another county because the hospital was located there;  or records of a coroner's inquest because the death was sudden or unexpected.

In obituary research, it is necessary to search the files of all likely newspapers. It is impossible to know which, if any, newspaper is going to have the most complete or best obituary. Most cities have more than one newspaper and an obituary for a specific individual can appear in more than one place.

It is hoped that newspaperobituaries.net provides access to the many databases of archived and current obituaries available on the internet. This site has grown to over 3,100 pages with links to more than 34,000 obituary indexes and access to over 9 million obituaries. Obituary indexes are divided up by state, county pages for each state have been added in 2012.   Visit us on Twitter to check for recently added indexes.