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 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.

The aim of newspaperobituaries.net is to provide you with access to the many databases of archived obituaries available on the internet. Currently, this site gives access to over 6 million free obituaries on the web. This site is divided up state by state and is a collection of newspaper obituaries and death notices in the United States. County pages for each state are being added in 2009; view  our RSS newsfeed to see which states have been completed.