How to Find an Obituary for a Specific Person: A Comprehensive Guide

You don’t need to dig too far to find old obituaries. Plenty of them are available online — if you know where to look. Local libraries keep copies, too. These accounts include critical birth and death dates, locations, and other documents, like census data.

They also often contain clues to historical records, which are incredibly valuable when looking up your roots. Below, I’ll offer tips for locating an obituary, whether you’re sifting through digital or physical copies.

» Explore a database of newspaper and funeral home obituaries

1. Gather all relevant information

Suppose you’re looking for a specific ancestor using an obituary. In that case, the first step is to gather all of the information on them to create a profile of the person, cross-referencing your sources for validity.

Start with what you have. Look over the information you have on the person; you never know what little piece of information will become a keyword that will kickstart your search.

Here are some of the questions you can ask yourself:

• When did they die, and where?
• What are their parents’ names?
• What are their children’s or spouse’s names?
• Where did they work?
• Were they in the military?
• Were they in a fraternal organization?

» Explore MyHeritage’s free military records collection

2. Visit a newspaper database

The best places to start looking are newspaper databases with dedicated obituary sections. MyHeritage just launched Old News.com, a website where you can save and share historical newspaper records online. It hosts a massive library of pages; you can search by name, keyword, place, and date.

We plan to add structured obituaries soon, which will simplify the process of finding and keeping the historical records you need. Plus, if you sign up as a user, you can link these records directly to your family tree.

Some of these newspapers may have missing editions, though, and the person you’re researching might have remarried without your knowledge— leaving gaps in your research. I usually tackle this issue by cross-referencing with siblings’ or children’s married names and checking newspapers from neighboring communities.

Tip: Some websites also ask volunteers to take pictures of headstones. Through them, you can find portraits of the individual and even a picture of an obituary clipped from a newspaper. It’s not a place you would usually look for, but it has helped my research more than once.

3. Use a combination of search terms

When looking through a database, begin with the most specific information available: the full name, including first and last. If there isn’t a match, you can explore variations. You could try using the middle name as the first name, common nicknames (Bill for William or Becky for Rebecca), or initials and abbreviations (Will for William or Beth for Elizabeth).

But you shouldn’t limit your search to names alone. Alternative spellings of the surname, known addresses, or even maiden names can be valuable search terms. Plus, you’ve gathered some details about parents or employers, and including them in the search can yield positive results.

Tip: For searches focused on the early 20th century, it’s important to remember that men often used initials instead of full names. Here, including additional keywords like relatives’ surnames, employers, or even street names can significantly improve the odds of success.

If you don’t know the date of death, focus on a specific geographic area and search for the surname within a reasonable date range. If you do know it, look through obituaries and death notices published around that week. You can also expand the search window and look for “Cards of Thanks” notices in newspapers.

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4. Consider biography collections

While newspaper archives are invaluable resources for tracing ancestry, their incompleteness can be a challenge. If your ancestor was a notable figure, biographies can also be a good resource.

They often provide details that can help you narrow your obituary search. You can use the information gleaned from the biography — profession, achievements, or location — as keywords when searching for their obituary online or in historical newspaper archives.

Many of these, particularly those compiled during the late 19th and early 20th-century genealogy booms in the U.S. and U.K., are now freely available online or digitized for a minimal fee.

Only some people achieved the level of prominence necessary for inclusion in such collections. Also, some regions might simply lack compiled biographies.

In some cases, while your direct ancestor may not be featured, a child might have been. These documents can include details about the parent you were initially seeking. They’ll shed light on the person’s life and reveal a new research avenue through their kids.

» Add adoptive, biological, and foster parents to your MyHeritage tree

5. Look through funeral or memorial cards

Funeral or memorial cards are custom you may or may not have encountered. They were once mailed, but you can now usually find them stacked near the guest book during a visitation or funeral. They can have a picture of the deceased, but often, the card may contain their entire obituary.

Chances are, someone you know has collected these cards, some even long before your time. Ask family and friends who may have attended the funeral and see if they kept one of them.

» Celebrate a life well-lived. Learn how to write a heartfelt obituary

What obituaries uncover about your ancestor

Obituaries can be incredibly useful for genealogy research because they provide basic and detailed information, including:

Essential dates and locations

Obituaries often list birth, death, memorial service, and burial dates that you need to start building a family tree. If your ancestor was married, you might see the year of the ceremony, too.

For example, an obituary of a sibling of one of my direct ancestors provided the maiden name of their mother so I could research that birth connection and expand my tree back to another generation.

These documents offer more than just death notices. They reveal the birthplace, residence, and even burial location. My research confirmed this. My family cemetery in Pulaski County, Missouri, held my great-grandmother’s parents in marked graves.

But, her eldest brother’s family remained a mystery. While I suspected they were buried there, unmarked graves offered no clues. Searching obituaries provided the missing piece — burial information confirming their presence in the family cemetery.

» Make your next trip to the cemetery a historical adventure

Family links

Obituaries often list close relatives like spouses, children, and siblings. For example, my 4th great-grandfather was tragically shot and killed in California, Missouri, in 1842 during a dispute over a horse race.

While I found records on the unsolved murder, it was his brother’s obituary from 1906 that had crucial details. This record confirmed that the authorities never caught his killers and also revealed his mother’s maiden name as Jobe. It even mentioned the family’s migration from Tennessee to central Missouri in 1818.

Similarly, a military record on my 3rd great-grandfather’s fate during the Civil War stated desertion on a specific date but with no record of him returning home. There were family stories about what happened to him, but I lacked enough information to confirm.

Finally, I found the obituary of his widow in a nearby rural town where she didn’t reside but was apparently known, published 66 years after his disappearance. The record simply stated, “We understand that Mrs. Smelcer’s husband was killed during the war.” This was the first documented confirmation I had of his death.

Tip: Women historically have been included in fewer records than men. They may be missing from newspaper articles, military records, and even the U.S. Federal Census before 1850. One place where you can find them is in historical newspapers and the obituaries of their children.

» Discover the history of matronymic traditions

Insights into your ancestor’s lives

While concise, obituaries can be a source of information about a deceased person’s life. They often list the individual’s current and past occupations, providing a glimpse of their career path.

Beyond professions, they may also detail places the deceased lived throughout their lives and the duration of their residencies. These announcements may also mention noteworthy professional and personal achievements for a well-rounded picture of the individual’s life story.

Personality

While looking into obituaries, I discovered a fascinating story about my second great-grandmother that I’d never heard before. It tells the story of her heroic rescue of my four-year-old great-grandmother, who fell down a well at the family farm.

She passed away from tuberculosis in 1938, so it is no surprise that this story was lost to time until I rediscovered it many decades later. One person I shared this with described it as an “amazing story of pioneer courage and resilience.” It is awe-inspiring what a mother will do for her child.

You may take a certain amount of pride in the obituaries of your ancestors, which show they were well respected by their families and in their communities. For example, my second great-grandfather, William A. Wall, “lived a good Christian life, always doing his duty as he saw it, ever ready to help a neighbor in distress.”

Religion

The obituary of my 3rd great-grandfather, Arnold Thomas Burd, specifically mentions his religious involvement: “When quite young, he joined the old Green River Baptist Church and lived a truly exemplary Christian life to the day of his death.”

This clue leads back to the minutes of the “Green River Baptist Church on Green River at Amos Ferry in Hart County, Kentucky, 1803-1827,” a source transcribed by Sandra K. Gorin. This provided some interesting context for several of my ancestors who lived in the area at that time.

» Explore different ways to use obituaries for family history research

Challenges when looking for an obituary

Accuracy

It’s crucial to treat obituary information with skepticism for a few reasons:

1. Very often, the person providing the information for the obituary does not provide 100% of the facts. Aside from omissions, they usually unintentionally give incorrect information on formal names, military service, and parents and siblings.
2. Often, the informant gave this information to a funeral home, who then relayed it to a newspaper. Even if the informant provided the details directly, the people in charge are sometimes misheard, mistyped, or otherwise misconstrued before printing.
3. Obituaries, especially those without large-scale notoriety, are usually hagiographies, not biographies. They present the deceased in the best possible light, exaggerating positive information, while negative information may be glossed over or omitted altogether.

My 4th great-grandmother, Eliza Bryant, had an actual short death notice in the newspaper due to living in urban Atlanta, Georgia. It was also wildly inaccurate, listing her sons and daughters as her brothers and sisters. It’s crucial to find multiple sources of information for cross-referencing.

In Oldnews.com, your search terms are highlighted not only in search results but also within the full articles, providing a clear visual cue for users to locate their points of interest quickly. Plusm you can easily zoom in and out on articles to examine the content thoroughly. This feature is useful for small print or details in older newspapers.

» Keep your family tree accurate by fixing inconsistencies

Availability

Finding obituaries for your ancestors in newspapers can be tricky. Older publications — especially those from before the 20th century — are less likely to have them. Also, those in larger cities often had less detail about everyday residents compared to smaller communities.

Even without a newspaper obituary, there are ways to learn about your ancestor’s death. Headstones, wills, and probate records can provide details about the passing. You can also piece together information about their life and death using historical documents, census data, or community archives.

Finding the records online presents additional challenges. Not all newspapers have digitized their archives, and even those that might focus on specific regions, making it challenging to locate obituaries from other areas.

Tip: I usually turn to Chronicling America. It’s a site run by the Library of Congress that lets me see which newspapers were around in a particular area, which ones have survived the test of time, and where I can find them.

Limitations

Unlike news articles, obituaries often weren’t subject to rigorous fact-checking. In many cases, family members wrote them. This can introduce bias, with positive aspects of the person’s life being exaggerated and adverse events omitted. They may have embellished accomplishments, creating a more idealized picture.

Plus, the information provided for the obituary might only sometimes be accurate. Memories can fade, leading to mistakes in details like relatives’ names, dates, or even the deceased’s work history, military service, or affiliations with organizations.

» Unearth your family’s past and explore MyHeritage’s military records

Name recognition

While searching digital newspaper archives like Oldnews.com can be fruitful (and I’ve found success on other sites, too), keep in mind that these websites might only sometimes recognize your search terms perfectly. Try variations of the name, including nicknames, to improve your chances.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) plays a crucial role in making these archives searchable. It isn’t flawless and can misinterpret text, especially handwritten names. I’ve encountered negative searches of historical records due to OCR errors as well as mistakes in human transcriptions.

These errors can be in first names but are usually more noticeable in surnames — the first keyword you search by. A lot of search tools for databases offer an option to include results that “sound like” the names you are searching for. This can be a helpful tool to combat transcription errors.

The newspapers in the Oldnews.com have been digitized using state-of-the-art optical character recognition (OCR) technology and enhanced with proprietary algorithms to improve searchability and readability.

The platform effectively handles a variety of fonts, including complex ones like Fraktur, which are often found in historical publications. This capability enhances the accuracy of text recognition, allowing users to find information even in more intricate typesetting styles.

Missing keywords

Finding obituaries can be challenging, with missing details. Newspapers have limited space, and families may prioritize certain information over others. This can lead to missing keywords like employers, military service, or even a spouse’s full name. Also, privacy concerns may lead to omitting details like the cause of death.

There are ways to overcome these gaps. You can broaden your search terms beyond just the person’s name. Consider including former employers, military service (“veteran” can be helpful), a spouse’s full name (if known), or even “Mrs./Mr. [Deceased’s spouse’s name]”.

If online searches aren’t fruitful, consider using indexes on genealogy platforms like MyHeritage or even manually searching the closest newspapers around the date and location of death. This is especially helpful for rural areas with less frequent publications.

Labeling

Even though obituaries often mention the deceased’s name and dates in the headline, they might not be labeled as “obituaries” at all. Historically, these announcements used formal language and large fonts for names. Rural newspapers were also more thorough when making them than extensive city publications.

To overcome these obstacles, expand your search terms beyond just “obituary” or “death notice.” Consider including keywords related to probate or estate administration. But, the most effective approach often involves focusing directly on the individual you’re researching.

By narrowing your search using the person’s name, location, and year of death as keywords, you can find any articles written about them during that specific timeframe. Searching for general phrases like “passed away,” “died peacefully,” or “survived by” in non-obituary articles can also yield valuable information.

For example, the obituary of my 3rd great-grandfather, Arnold T. Burd, wasn’t labeled as such. But I looked for his name, location, and date range and found a relevant article despite the unconventional headline “A Good Man Gone.”

Start your genealogy research with obituaries

Obituaries can be incredibly helpful in discovering a specific person, connecting them to other family members, and providing their place of origin. As more newspapers are digitized and OCR technology improves, obituaries should be much easier to locate.

» Connect with loved ones using obituaries — all in one place