Free Online California Mortuary and Funeral Home Records

The Ancestor Hunt regularly adds and updates new collection links, as well as searches for and fixes broken links.
(This page's most recent update is September 2024)
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Mortuary and Funeral Home records are yet another little-used resource by genealogy researchers. They are difficult to obtain, especially in hard copies from the original funeral home. You can contact them, but often, mortuaries went out of business or were sold to another company. And many of the original records have been lost or destroyed.

Never fear though, many mortuary records have been digitized and made available online.

Online record collections are available from subscription sites such as Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.

But there are other state and local collections available as well, and some of them are indexes only (from ledger books). And some are free and available online!

Here are some articles that may entice you to research Mortuary and Funeral Home records:

Have you ever looked at a mortuary record? There is an abundance of great information available! Here is a list of some of the information on such a record, besides the brand and cost of the casket:

Name of informant and person paying for the service
Cause of death
Address of the deceased
Burial location “to be”
In some cases – the name of the father and mother
Name of attending physician as well as hospital or place of death
Date of birth
Date of death
Date of planned burial
Obituary from multiple newspapers
Occupation
Birth Place
Marital Status
Gender
Race
Plus much more

Below are links to collections that are online and available for free. Be aware that some collections have full mortuary records, some are glorified death indexes, and some are just indexes to the actual mortuary records.

Note: Some links listed take you to a FamilySearch Collection of digital images. Near the bottom of the page under Film/Digital Notes is the name of each sub-collection. If there is a camera icon at the right of the name (in the Format column) then the collections’ images are browsable. If there is a camera with a key icon, it is only available at a Family History Center or affiliated library. If there is a film reel icon, then it is only available in microfilm format, not digital. To take full advantage make sure that you are logged in to FamilySearch. The results may be different if you are signed in, rather than not.

California Mortuary and Funeral Home Records

For all Free California Collection Links in 24 Genealogy Categories, go to the By Location Page, click on California, and then click on the category of interest.

Good Luck and Happy Hunting!

California Mortuary and Funeral Home Records

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