Free Obituaries – Where to Find Your Ancestors’ Obituaries

For most of our ancestors, who were hard working people and didn’t achieve high status during their lives, the only biography that was ever written about them was their obituary. Obituaries are often chock full of information about your ancestor’s family, including names and dates, locations where they lived previously, clubs or churches they belonged to, and what their occupation was. Check out the following resources for free obituaries that you can access online instead of heading to the library to dust off the microfilm!

1. You can head over to Ancestry.com and use your free 14-day trial to check out the vast database of obituaries on this mega-genealogy website. Their collection contains obituaries from 2003 to the present (some earlier) as well as some historic newspapers covering 1851 to 2003. Their obituary database includes records from 27 countries. Over 128 million records in the United States alone and 3 million in Canada. Their system allows you to search obituaries based on name, the newspaper’s name, date or place of publication, and any keyword.

2. Proquest is a service available to patrons of subscribing libraries. The obituaries cover 1849 to the present and are available for Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC. There are over 10 million obituaries and death notices in this collection. Check with your local library to see if you can get access to this great collection of free obituaries.

3. Obitfinder has death notices and obituaries for 60 percent of Americans that pass away every year. The most recent obituaries can be accessed for free. Older ones cost $2.95. The collection includes over 700 United States, Canada, and UK newspapers.

4. Obituary Central has free obituaries from 1993 to 2001 covering the USA and Canada.

5. Obituary Daily Times is another service to find free obituaries. This is an international index that is available through Rootsweb.

6. Obituary Depot has free obituaries from 1996 to the present.

So, you have a lot of options to find your ancestors for free in online obituaries. Start searching today!