One of the main goals for genealogists is to find obituaries. Obituaries are a gold mine of information. They provide death dates and locations, funeral and cemetery information, and more importantly – information about the relatives of the deceased’s family and extended family. This family name information is often not found anywhere else.

Obituary Genealogy Guide

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:

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 September 2022)

General U.S.

Illinois

If you wish to search this state’s historic newspapers for obituaries, click on Illinois Online Historical Newspapers Summary

Good Luck and Happy Hunting!

For other Free Illinois Links, click on the category of interest:

Newspapers
Yearbooks
Births
Marriages
Deaths
BMD Records
Alumni Records
Cemetery Records
Church Records
Coroner Records
Criminal Records
Directories
Divorce Records
Immigration Records
Military Records
Mortuary Records
Naturalizations
Obituaries
Photos
Probate and Wills
School Records
Tax Records
Voter Records

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