Ohio Obit Database

Do you have Ohio ancestors?

In the spirit of that all important holiday, Halloween, the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center is helping Ohio libraries organize their dead people. No, we’re not talking zombies here, but obituaries!

The Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center hosts The Ohio Obituary Index, an award-winning web site that you can join.  The obituary listings of 49 Ohio Public Libraries are online, where people can find and order them. Although they partner with Ancestry.com and Archives.com, their site will always remain free to view.

This user-friendly web-based index of newspaper obituaries includes other items, such as local history collections of clippings, wills and estates, funeral records, etc.  It contains over 2,200,000 names and citations to over 3 million newspaper sources.

Illinois Obit Finder

The Illinois Obit Finder lets you search for citations for obituaries that can be found in the Newspaper Microfilm Collection of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (ALPL).

The Illinois Obit Finder contains only those names that have been researched at the library. If you find someone’s name, the obituary is available through the ALPL. If you do not find a name it just means that no one has researched that particular name and recorded it.

Click here for a list of the Illinois newspaper titles on microfilm that are available through the ALPL.

If you find an obituary citation and you want a copy of the obituary, you can order a copy or borrow the microfilm on interlibrary loan. You can also contribute your obituary citations to the Illinois Obit Finder database.

The more names that are researched at the ALPL and contributed to the database. the more complete the Illinois Obit Finder will become!

Glenview Obituaries

The Glenview Newspaper Obituary Index is a service offered through the Library. Find it on our genealogy page. The index lists names for which there was an obituary or death notice in the newspapers that served Glenview since 1928, and for which the Library owns microfilm.

South Carolina Roots

While you are searching South Carolina obituaries visit the home page of the Chesterfield District Chapter of the South Carolina Genealogical Society. Here you can access The Cheraw Chronicle & Chesterfield Advertiser OBITUARY ARCHIVE ONLINE. It has transcribed obituaries from the second quarter of 2003 through February 2010.

Send your feedback to the Society at editor@chesterfield.scgen.org

Looking for Very Old Chicago-Area Newspapers?

Are you trying to find a very old obit or news story from the Chicago area?

Are you positive it is not in the Chicago Tribune Archive online?

Have you asked our Reference Staff for some professional guidance in this area, and the Library's resources do not go back far enough?

You may consider checking with the Chicago Public Library, Harold Washington General Information Services Dept., Chicago newspaper microfilm holdings.

Date range for the standard Chicago English language papers is from 1833 to current. Newspapers include Chicago Democrat, Chicago American, Chicago Daily American, Chicago Express, Chicago Journal, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Democrat Press, Chicago Times, Inter Ocean, Chicago Herald, Chicago Record, Chicago Mail, Chicago Evening Post, Chicago Daily News, Chicago Record, Chicago Record Herald, Chicago Times Herald, Chicago Chronicle, Chicago Defender, Chicago Sun, Chicago Today, and others.

If the obit or news story is about an immigrant or member of a first generation ethnic group, you should also investigate the following, which CPL also has on microfilm:
--Chicago Neighborhood newspapers
--Suburban newspapers
--Various U.S. ethnic newspapers
--Alternative press newspapers
--Early American Newspapers (1704 -1820)
--The Lerner Newspaper Collection of Chicago neighborhood and suburban newspapers (1905 -1993)
--The Underground Newspaper Microfilm Collection (1963 -1984)

To find out which titles and years they own, or to ask them which newspaper might contain what you need, call (312)747-4300.