
Over the past few decades, thanks to volunteers, librarians, and archivists, a great number of indexes to obituary information and transcriptions of obituaries from newspapers have been provided for free online. These searchable indexes provide the location in old newspapers where the obituary can be found. Sometimes the scanned newspaper clipping is included.
And remember you can always find online historical newspapers to search for obituaries for free on this website (links at Newspaper Links).
Here are a few articles that may be helpful:
- How to Find Historical Obituaries
- What is the Future of Obituaries?
- What is the Difference Between an Obituary, a Death Notice, an Obituary Index, and a Death Index?
- 32 Reasons Why Searching for Obituaries is Like Finding Gold
- 9 Ways to Effectively Find Obituaries in Online Newspapers
Each entry below will be appended with one of the five types of obituaries: Transcriptions, Clippings, Index, Abstracts, or Online.
Online entries present an obituary on a website that publishes online obituaries, generally, a phenomenon that occurs after the year 2000.
Indexes are just that, an index that at a minimum includes the deceased’s name and the name and date of the newspaper that the obituary appears in. Some indexes also include the date of death, so be careful if you are recording the date in your genealogy database. Make sure that it is the death date.
(Updated May 2023)
Click on your state of interest to bring up the online collections for you to browse and search:
- Illinois Obituaries and Obituary Index Links
- Indiana Obituaries and Obituary Index Links
- Iowa Obituaries and Obituary Index Links
- Kansas Obituaries and Obituary Index Links
- Michigan Obituaries and Obituary Index Links
- Minnesota Obituaries and Obituary Index Links
- Missouri Obituaries and Obituary Index Links
- Nebraska Obituaries and Obituary Index Links
- North Dakota Obituaries and Obituary Index Links
- Ohio Obituaries and Obituary Index Links
- Oklahoma Obituaries and Obituary Index Links
- South Dakota Obituaries and Obituary Index Links
- Wisconsin Obituaries and Obituary Index Links
Good Luck and Happy Hunting!