How to: Find Free Obituary Directories

Find your ancestors using online obituary directories.

If you are looking for a friend or a family member, are tracing your genealogical background or are just wondering if a particular celebrity is still alive you can check online directories. These databases can help you find information about a person you have lost contact with or can help you find missing pieces of your family tree. If you lost someone to the Vietnam War, there is a directory to help you find and memorialize your fallen service member.

Instructions

1. Find recent death records by checking Death Indexes. This is a database of recent obituaries that you can search by state or county. It also includes death records, death notices and an online Social Security death index that lists every registered death of U.S. citizens who have died since 1962.

2. Find your ancestors using the United States Obituary Collection or the database at Olden Times. The U.S. Obituary Collection is part of Ancestry.com, and you can search it by location, marriage date or the last known location of the person you are looking for. The Olden Times compiles scanned images from newspapers dating back to the 19th century and includes information from England, Ireland and Australia. Both sites are searchable by name if that is the only information you have.

3. Find out about celebrity deaths at The Blog of Death. This directory lists celebrity deaths in chronological order and also lists obituaries of people of note you may never have heard of before. For example, a recent search included the obituary for the man who may have been the last surviving person who worked on the Golden Gate Bridge -- painting the cables for $11 a day during the Great Depression. You can search this directory by name or date of death, or you can look through the archives or scan the list of recent deaths.

4. Find a person who died during the Vietnam War at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund's Virtual Wall. This is an online version of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. You can search it by name, branch of service or casualty date. You can also search it by date of birth or the location of enlistment. On this site, you can also post stories about the person you lost in the Vietnam War and engage with others who share your experience.

Tips & Warnings

• Use as many resources as you can to help you locate relatives or friends you are searching for. Cross-reference all available databases and check local libraries in the person's last known location.

• No database is complete as there are people whose deaths have never been registered.

References

• Death Indexes: Online Searchable Death Indexes and Records
• Ancestry.com: United States Obituary Collection
• The Olden Times: Obituaries, Deaths and Funeral Notices
• The Blog of Death: Home
• Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund: Search the Virtual Wall