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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.
Over the past few decades, thanks to volunteers, librarians, and archivists, many 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 record the date in your genealogy database. Make sure that it is the death date.
General U.S.
- Currentobituary.com index, 2001-2014
- Obituary Daily Times Index, 1995-2016
- U.S., Selected Jewish Obituaries, 1948-2002
- United Methodist Church Annual Conference Journal Memoirs and Obituary Index
- United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014
- United States, Obituaries, American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1899-2012
Vermont Obituaries
- Addison County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Addison County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Bennington County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Caledonia County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Caledonia County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Chelsea, Boardway & Cilley Funeral Home, 2013- (Transcriptions)
- Chittenden County Obituaries
- Chittenden County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Chittenden County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Essex County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Essex County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Franklin County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Grand Isle County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Hartford, The Vermont Chronicle Marriage & Death Notices, 1826-1882
- Hartford, Valley News Obituary Archive since 18 Mar 2006
- Lamoille County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Lamoille County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Middlebury, Sanderson Funeral Service, 2006-
- Miscellaneous Vermont Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Newport, Curtis-Britch Funeral Home, 2010- (Transcriptions)
- Northeast Kingdom Vermont Death Notices and Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Northfield, Index to Norwich University Newspapers, 1860-2000
- Norwich University Newspaper Index, 1860-1992
- Orange County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Orange County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Orleans County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Orleans County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Randolph, Day Funeral Home, Obituaries 2007- (Transcriptions)
- Rutland County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Rutland County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Rutland Herald & Burlington Free Press Index (search word = “obituary”
- Rutland Herald Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Rutland, Clifford Funeral Home, 2016- (Transcriptions)
- University of Vermont Alumni Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Vermont GenealogyBuff Obituary Files
- Vermont Obituaries – Funerals and Death Notices 2012-
- Vermont Obituaries – Obit City
- Vermont Obituaries 1996-2020
- Vermont Obituaries Archive (Index is Free)
- Vermont Obituary Records, Early 19th Century (Transcriptions)
- Vermont USGenWeb Obituary Project
- Vermont, Vermont Vital Records of the Early 19th Century
- Washington County Deaths and Funerals 1894-1911
- Washington County Deaths, Funerals, Births & Fires (Transcriptions)
- Washington County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Washington County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Windham County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Windham County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Windsor County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Windsor County, Obituaries (Transcriptions)
- Woodstock, Cabot Funeral Home, 2010- (Transcriptions)
If you wish to search this state’s historic newspapers for obituaries, click on Vermont Online Historical Newspapers Summary.
Good Luck and Happy Hunting!
Obituary Search Frequently Asked Questions
Many current obituaries can be found online via a Google search. These obituaries may be found on obituary archive sites, newspaper websites, or on funeral home websites. You may even find some obituaries by doing a search on social media. If it is someone who died many years ago, you should search newspapers, do a Google search, or look on local library websites.
Unless you visit a library with newspaper originals or access to a microfilm machine for newspapers that have been scanned, the easiest way is to search online newspapers. There are subscription newspaper databases and free historical newspaper collections. For free online collections, you should use The Ancestor Hunt’s lists of links to collections from the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Access to links to over 75,000 titles can be achieved, by going to that site’s Newspaper Links Page.
If you are looking at the original local newspaper or a scanned copy, just go to the Obituary section in the few days following the death. If you are searching online, it is more difficult because the newspaper had to be scanned and the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process had to be applied. Depending on the quality of the original, you might need to be creative with your search criteria, especially if you do not have the date of death. Make sure that you are looking in the right location as well as making sure that the online newspaper collection has a date range that includes the date of death.
Fortunately, public libraries, some genealogy sites, and genealogy societies have transcribed millions of newspaper obituaries, and they also have created obituary indexes that specify the deceased’s name, the title of the newspaper that contains the obituary, and the date of publication. Using The Ancestor Hunt’s Obituary Page will lead you to obituary and obituary index collections for the U.S. and Canada. It has about 20,000 links to free transcription, index, and clipping collections.
Many libraries and genealogy societies have either transcribed obituaries in their local area or have created obituary indexes that list the deceased’s name, the title of the publication, as well as the date that the obituary was published. With this information, you can track down the newspaper that has the obituary in it. Often if you find the deceased in an index in a library or the library offers research services and the library has the newspaper, they may be able to send you a copy via email or postal mail.
Some of the most popular are Legacy.com’s Memorial websites, Forever Missed, and Ever Loved. To find a possible memorial site for someone who has passed away in recent years, look for these sites as well as complete a Google search.