TIP OF THE WEEK –
USING LOCAL LIBRARIES TO FIND OBITUARIES

While on-line newspaper vendors like GenealogyBank.com and NewspaperArchive.com are terrific resources, these databases often do not have newspapers for the geographical area you are researching. When online sources fail to find an obituary, what is a person to do?

One excellent resource to check with is the local public library in the city, town, or county in which your ancestor died. Provide them with the name, the date of death, and ask them if they have newspapers for that period that they can search for you. Sometimes this query can be done via the local library’s web site. And some local libraries even have links to an obituary index that you can search.

Libraries might charge a nominal fee for this service, but some may provide it for free, especially when they can email you a scanned image of the obituary, rather than mailing it to you.

So don’t forget the local library in the area where your ancestor lived or died can be a valuable resource