OK – you won’t get rich when you find an obituary, but your genealogy research will benefit, and your family history research will get richer.
We have a tendency as researchers to underappreciate the value of the documents or articles that we already have acquired, and spend our time looking for new “stuff.” There are so many “facts” and clues that can be retrieved from these artifacts if we just pay attention. And they are just sitting there staring at us. This is especially true for obituaries, in which you need to study every word for clues.
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Good Luck and Happy Hunting!
9 replies on “32 Reasons Why Searching for Obituaries is Like Finding Gold”
On the Marks example – were the sisters deceased as well? I read the late as pertaining to the list of names that followed. Now I’m wondering if I’ve made errors in my obituary extractions. Thanks!
Good question, Stacey. Actually they were not. They were very much alive. It is tricky to write that properly. Thanks for visiting and thanks for your comment.
The simple way to clarify that would be to list the ones alive first and then and “the late”….
re: Doris’s suggestion to list the living relatives first: absolutely correct from a grammatical standpoint. Then “the late” would apply to all names following it. But often, as was true in this case, males could be listed first and then females, or siblings could be in birth order.
It was through an obituary that I discovered my daughter and my son’s best friend since he was 2 years old are 3rd cousins. We always considered Arthur a member of our family…and by golly, he really is family! LOL
That’s outstanding Karin. Thanks for sharing that story!
In the Weber Obituary it actually includes a picture of the deceased. Another piece of the puzzle.
31, Helen! Thanks for bringing that up. As I was writing this article, that occurred to me (that the photo was there) and it totally slipped my mind. Great comment. Thanks.
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