Getting Your Ancestor’s Obituary and a Bonus, Too

GenealogyBank’s deep backfile newspaper archives are packed with stories—over 1.6 billion of them.

I like it when old obituaries give key details in the lives of our ancestors. It’s always a bonus when you find that a photo was included with their obituary.

Here are some examples:

obituary for Alphonso Boone, Oregonian newspaper article 4 April 1915
Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), 4 April 1915, page 16
obituary for Mrs. O. H. Adams, Oregonian newspaper article 6 March 1902
Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), 6 March 1902, page 4
obituary for Ida Gevurtz, Morning Oregonian newspaper article 26 April 1921
Morning Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), 26 April 1921, page 4

These great stories and photos were found in the Oregonian (Portland, Oregon) Newspaper Archives (1861–1987). Dig into our Newspaper Archives (1690 – 2010) and see what you find.

[bottom_post_ad]

4 thoughts on “Getting Your Ancestor’s Obituary and a Bonus, Too

  1. Hello – love this site!! But I am frustrated because whenever I follow the recommended guidelines and put a name or date, it won’t allow it to continue. How in the world can it be narrowed down when it is a popular name like Miller in a state as large as Michigan? I would greatly appreciate some advice on this. Thanks so much for this site – lots of wonderful stuff. Guess I just had the difficulty of being born with a very popular maiden name – Miller. Take care and thanks!!

  2. Debbie –
    Here’s what I do.
    If the surname is a common one – like Miller – and is generating too many search results for me to sort through – I add another search term or narrow the date range.

    For example – maybe the name of their home town is distinctive – and therefore won’t generate a lot of search result ‘noise’.

    Another approach I take – especially when I want to search ‘every’ Kemp etc. is to search in a shorter time span. This way I can easily go through all of the search results in one sitting.

    You’ll want to experiment and see just what that incremenatal time line spread should be: one year; 3 years, five years.

    Give those approaches a try and see if that makes your sifting through to find the gold nuggets about your ancestors and relatives.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.