Do not limit your search for obituaries to just one newspaper. Your search may start with the newspaper closest to where your ancestor lived or died, but it should not end there. If your ancestor lived in an urban area, consider looking at other papers or suburban newspapers near where the ancestor lived. If your ancestor was in a rural area, look at nearby papers and always look at the newspaper from the county seat. Also consider foreign language or ethnic newspapers if your ancestor was an immigrant or the child of immigrants. Different newspapers do not alway give the exact same information. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Genealogists frequently look in the newspaper nearest to where their relative died for an obituary. That is a good place to start, but the search should not end there. Other newspapers may have carried obituaries as well and those writeups might be different from the one published in the nearest town. I always check the county seat newspapers. They might have published death notices or longer obituaries for residents throughout the county, not just the county seat proper. And even larger towns in nearby counties might have published notices of your ancestor’s death. Samuel Neill died in West Point, Hancock County, Illinois in 1912. The newspaper in Carthage, the county seat, published an obituary. A newspaper in Quincy, Adams County, Illinois, to the south published a slightly different […]
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