Maine Obituaries

Maine’s newspapers have reported deaths since the 1780s, when the state was still part of Massachusetts. The Maine State Library has digitized a large share of its historic papers and offers free obituary lookups in selected titles.

Recent Maine obituaries (2000 to today)

Most obituaries published since about 2000 are online. Daily papers post paid death notices and family-written obituaries in an Obituaries section, usually hosted by Legacy.com, and keep them online with a guest book. The largest daily papers in Maine are:

• Portland Press Herald
• Bangor Daily News
• Sun Journal (Lewiston)
• Kennebec Journal
• Times Record (Brunswick)

Legacy.com’s Maine page searches the obituaries of most of these papers and many smaller ones at once. Funeral homes also post obituaries on their own websites, often before the newspaper does and sometimes instead of it: search the person’s name with the town and “obituary” or “funeral home.” For obituaries no longer online, ask your public or state library: many offer NewsBank or ProQuest databases with the full text of recent newspapers, free with a library card.

Maine obituaries in historic newspapers

The Falmouth Gazette, first printed in 1785 in what is now Portland, was the first newspaper in the District of Maine. Early notices were short and often appeared under “Deaths” alongside shipping news, which matters in a coastal state: deaths at sea, in shipwrecks and in distant ports were reported in the home-town paper, sometimes months after the fact.

As county seats and mill towns grew in the 1800s, weekly papers in places like Bangor, Augusta, Belfast and Ellsworth carried increasingly detailed obituaries, including Civil War casualties and the deaths of lumbermen, sailors and farmers. Many Franco-American communities in the late 1800s and early 1900s also had French-language papers, which are worth checking for families from Quebec and Acadia.

The Maine Newspaper Project at the State Library has digitized well over 100,000 pages, published through the Digital Maine Repository and Chronicling America, and three further collections of digitized Maine papers are on the Internet Archive.

Where to find older Maine obituaries

Digitized Maine newspapers

• Maine Newspaper Project, Digital Maine — Free digitized Maine newspapers, plus links to other digitized Maine titles.

Archives and libraries

• Genealogy services, Maine State Library — Microfilm holdings and staff obituary lookups when you know the date and place of death.
• Maine State Archives — State vital records and other government records useful for confirming a death.
• Maine Newspapers, FamilySearch Research Wiki — Volunteer-maintained guide to Maine newspaper archives, indexes and microfilm, with local links.

Also search the nationwide archives: Chronicling America, FamilySearch, Find a Grave, Newspapers.com. See all nationwide obituary resources.

Maine death records

Maine death records are public: anyone can get a non-certified copy, while certified copies go to family and others with an interest. Order from the town clerk or Maine CDC; the Maine State Archives holds older vital records.

• Maine CDC Data, Research and Vital Statistics — the office that issues Maine death certificates, with ordering instructions and fees.
• Where to Write for Vital Records: Maine — the CDC’s summary of where to order, current fees and which years the office holds.
• Maine Vital Records, FamilySearch Research Wiki — free death indexes and certificate collections, with the years each covers.

Tips for finding an obituary in Maine

• Go to the town clerk. Maine keeps vital records by town, so the clerk where the death happened can issue a copy.
• Ask the State Library. Staff will look up an obituary on microfilm if you know the date and place of death.
• Check Massachusetts papers for early deaths. Maine was part of Massachusetts until 1820.
• Look beyond the word “obituary.” Older papers reported deaths under headings like “Died,” “Deaths,” local news and personals columns, funeral notices and cards of thanks, and often listed married women under the husband’s name (“Mrs. John Smith”). See death notices vs. obituaries.

Common questions