American newspapers have reported deaths since the first lasting colonial paper, the Boston News-Letter, began in 1704. What they printed, and who got an obituary, changed a great deal over three centuries, and those changes affect what you can expect to find when you search for an ancestor.
Colonial and early American papers
Early papers were usually four pages, set by hand and published weekly, so death reports were brief: a line or two under a heading such as “Died” or “Deaths,” or a mention in local news. Longer tributes were reserved for ministers, officials and other prominent men. The word “obituary” comes from the Latin obitus, meaning death.
The 1800s: longer notices and new papers
As papers grew larger and more frequent in the 1800s, death reports became longer and more personal, often with religious language and, later in the century, detailed accounts of illnesses and accidents. Faster typesetting, especially the Linotype machine introduced in 1886, helped papers add pages. Immigrant, Black and other community newspapers reported deaths the mainstream press ignored, which makes them essential for many family histories.
The historian Janice Hume, a journalism professor at the University of Georgia, studied this period in Obituaries in American Culture (University Press of Mississippi, 2000). She found that whom papers chose to remember, and how, reflected the values of each era, from the early republic through the Civil War and the women’s suffrage movement.
The 1900s: paid notices and the “common man” obituary
In the 20th century, most papers began charging for death notices, while staff-written news obituaries were reserved for people editors judged newsworthy. Later in the century, some papers began writing news obituaries about ordinary people as well as the famous. A well-known example is the New York Times series “Portraits of Grief,” short profiles of people killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks, published from 2001 into 2002.
Obituaries online
Since the late 1990s, most newspaper obituaries have also been published online, usually through Legacy.com, founded in 1998, and funeral homes post obituaries on their own websites. At the same time, many papers have cut staff or closed, so a recent death may appear only on a funeral home site. For historic obituaries, digitized newspapers have made millions of old notices searchable for free.
What this means for research
- Expect early notices to be very short; look for related news items, estate notices and cards of thanks.
- Check community and foreign-language papers as well as the main daily.
- For recent deaths, search funeral home websites as well as newspapers.
Sources: Janice Hume, Obituaries in American Culture (University Press of Mississippi, 2000); New York Times, “Portraits of Grief” (2001–2002); Library of Congress, Chronicling America.