Virginia Obituaries

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.

Online Resources

 * Online Virginia Death Records &amp; Indexes links by county
 * Virginia Genealogy Obituaries
 * ObitsArchive.com - Virginia ($)
 * ObituariesHelp.org - Virginia Newspaper Obituaries Listings
 * Old Virginia Obituaries, 1790-1940
 * Obituary Links
 * USGenWeb Obituary Project Virginia
 * Obituary Depot Virginia
 * — index and images
 * Indexed Images of the Virginia Gazette, 1736-1780
 * Virginia Newspaper Archives (1736 - 1986) GenealogyBank ($)
 * Virginia Online Historical Newspapers
 * Chronicling America Virginia Digitized Newspapers
 * Virginia Newspapers ($)
 * NewspaperArchive ($)
 * Virginia Gazette for the years 1774-1775, 1791-1803, 1807-1809 Google News
 * Virginia Herald for the years 1792-1795, 1807-1809 Virginia Herald for the years 1792-1795, 1807-1809Google News
 * Virginia Argus for the years 1799-1802, 1804-1805, 1810-1811, 1816Google News
 * Virginia Gazette and General Advertiser for the years 1803-1805 Google News
 * OnlineNewspapers.com