Death Records Now

Many people are confused about where to find obituaries online. More and more newspapers are no longer publishing them. People are left wondering where to find recent newspaper obituaries as well as old obituaries archives.

What is an Obituary?

An obituary is a notice that announces the death of someone with a description of the person’s life and list of family members. An obituary is a valuable tool for genealogists and family tree researchers because it contains clues about the deceased and the deceased’s family. The obituary is often written by the funeral home or mortuary, but many people choose to write an obituary for their loved one that is published in the newspaper and included in the funeral program.

Online Obituary Search

Genealogists prefer online obituary search for family tree and ancestry search when they have no previous knowledge of the deceased. If they don’t know where to begin, the large databases available online can help to narrow the search down to specific geographic locations or archives. You can find what you need, but it will take some time. Many obituaries and death notices from state vital records have not been uploaded online yet so you may have to continue your search through traditional means, including libraries, city archives, and public records.

Online Obituaries Search of databases

If you are researching obituaries for genealogy and family tree research, a good place to start your search for obituaries is on the Internet. There are several free and commercial databases where you can find death records and newspaper obituaries. Most of the commercial databases have reasonable fees that cover costs of security, and reliability.

Where to begin your search for Newspaper Obituaries Online?

Even though obituaries seem to be disappearing from your local newspaper, the best place to start your online obituary research is in Newspaper Obituaries. Many newspapers publish obituaries online but not in their paper editions. They have online databases of recent, current and archived obituaries. In some cases you have to have a membership, but most of them are free, you just have to sign up.

Free Databases of Old Archived Obituaries

There are several databases out there dedicated to keeping genealogy free. They are hard to find and are often not the first place people look. They are archived newspaper obituaries and death notices, and old newspaper obituaries, and old obituaries archives. Many of these archives are free to search and have been accumulating data for years. If you have a little bit of information about where to look and the family name you’ll have access to a huge free database.

What you need for searching Newspaper Obituaries Online?

You will have the most success if you know a bit of information about the person or people you are researching. Online searches can bring up thousands of search results if you enter information that is too vague or incomplete. This will make your job much more time consuming to have to go through all these records to find the one that you need. If it’s possible, before you start your search find as much of the following as you can:

• Last Name
• First Name
• City and state where deceased lived
• Birth Year

Free Archive Obituaries and Death Notices and Ancestry Search Advice

Many public records and obituaries databases charge a fee to search their archives. You have to buy a membership that lasts for a certain length of time. But the same information is often available for free; you just have to know where to look for it. To sort through some of the confusion, start your search at ObituariesHelp.org. This website offers advice and help identifying what you are looking for and if you really need to purchase a membership or if you can find the obituaries you need for free.

Melanie Walters

I Have been searching for my birth mother for several years now. I am 29 Years old and I am a mother of three amazing boys who don’t know there own grandmother . I have an older brother who really is not interested in finding her. I found out last year on Christmas Eve that I had a sister same birth mom. She was adopted and she new about my brother and I all her life. I met her for the first time last year on New Years. It was so awesome getting to know her I never had a sister I never new about her which makes me sad. My mother’s name is Martha Ann McGraw her D.O.B. IS 1-1-1959 her last known where about was in Mesquite Texas in 2002. She has no record after 2002. She is not in any death records in Texas. She hasn’t been remarried as far as know. I tried every agency. Most of them are way tooooooooo exspensive. It is an endless search . Does anyone have any ideas for me on my journy to search for my long lost Birth Mother ? NO ON IN MY ENTIRE FAMILY IS HELPING ME NOR KNOW WHERE SHE COULD BE THEY GAVE UP. I will never give up my search for my mother. PLEASE HELP SOMEONE!!!

ancestry.com is sometimes useful. Try searching local town databses, like the tax assessor’s office database, in nearby towns to where you think she may be. If she owns a home/property you may find luck. Those databases are open to the public (a few towns may charge small fee to access), but they will not show up on a google search.

This can be a tough thing. Do you make yourself searchable on the internet? If you maintain a public page for yourself, you will make it easy for her to find you, if she’s looking.

Keep searching, the internet is a valuable tool. Use different search engines, yahoo, ask.com, etc …. sometimes they come up with different results.