User:Ruth2jones/sandbox/AR Obituaries

Contact county genealogical and historical societies

Obituaries may provide information such as the age of the deceased, birth date and place, names of living relatives and their residences, maiden name, occupation, death date, cause of death, and place of burial. Deceased family members are frequently mentioned. Obituaries may also mention previous places of residence, immigration information, religion, and any social organizations or activities in which the deceased was involved.

Generally, the first step to obtaining an obituary is to find the death date of the person so that the obituary can be more easily found in a newspaper. Death dates may be obtained from the Statewide death index, or cemeteries in the local area where the person is believed to have died. Once a death date is known, the local library in the area may be contacted to learn whether or not they have newspapers for the time period needed, and if someone is willing to look for an obituary in that newspaper. If the newspapers are not held at the library, the local newspaper office may also be contacted to learn where older editions of the newspaper are kept. Some libraries and even newspaper publishers keep obituary files.

For information on national newspaper sources for obituaries see United States Obituaries.

Obituary Resources On Line
may have images of obituaries


 * Historical Newspapers Collection at Ancestry.com (Free /$)
 * Arkansas Obituary Collection at ancestry.com (Free /$)
 * 62 newspaper titles included
 * shows date range of obituary for each newspaper title
 * links to search box for particular paper
 * search results link to full obituary image


 * Arkansas Obituaries at PublicLibraries.com. (Free)
 * gives links to obituary newspaper columns, official government records, and societies that may help in searched for obituaries
 * 32 newspapers are linked; most show only recent obituaries
 * 3 newspapers have historic obituary archives obituaries: Area Wide News, Ashley County Ledger, Northwest Arkansas Times


 * Card Catalog search title "obituaries" at ancestry.com (Free /$)
 * Obituary Project at Arkansas USGenWeb (Free)
 * ObitFinder at Legacy.com. (Free)
 * newspaper obituaries only very recent, but entire obituary and source cited
 * uses Social Security Death Index


 * |pcrid|23787178989|pkw|obituary%20archives|pmt|b&gclid=CJaDupeRwLoCFcZFMgodbWsAZw Get Online Obituaries at archives.com ($)

lists of links to Arkansas obituaries
 * Arkansas Obituary, Genealogy Resources and Help at AncestorHunt.com. Guide with links only (Free)
 * Obituaries links at cyndislist.com (Free)
 * Arkansas Obituaries at funeral.com (Free)

Additional Obituary Resources

 * The "United States Obituaries" and "United States Newspapers" Wiki articles list sources for finding obituaries and the newspapers that published them. Also, see "Washington Newspapers" for additional sources and how to locate newspapers.


 * For Washington, some obituaries have been published and indexed in genealogical periodicals. Many of these are referenced in the "Places" section of the Periodical Source Index (PERSI) which is described in the "Washington Periodicals" section.

For published obituaries and indexes, click and select the topic "Obituaries." For counties, simply add a comma and click Search.

Web Sites

 * Distantcousin.com
 * Deathindexes.com
 * ObitsArchive Offers a free, every name index of a large collection of obituaries and death notices. Copies of the articles can be obtained for a fee ($).
 * ObituariesHelp.org