How to Search Obituaries for Free (Every Method That Works)

You can search obituaries for free using four main routes: Legacy.com for recent deaths, FamilySearch's obituary collections for indexed 20th-century notices, Chronicling America and Google News Archive for older newspapers, and your public library card for the paid databases libraries license on your behalf. Between them, they cover deaths from the 1800s to last week without spending a cent.

This guide walks through each method in the order that actually works — newest deaths first, then backward in time — plus the search tricks that find misspelled names and maiden names. And because an obituary usually names every surviving relative ("survived by his niece Ruth of Toledo…"), keep the free family relationship calculator open while you read one: it turns those lists of survivors into exact relationships in seconds.

Start with the death date (even a rough one)

Obituary searching gets ten times easier once you know roughly when the person died, because most free archives let you narrow by date. If you don't know:

• Social Security Death Index (SSDI): free to search on FamilySearch, it covers most U.S. deaths reported to Social Security from 1962 onward and gives the month and year of death. Full walkthrough in our SSDI search guide.
• Find a Grave: a headstone photo gives you the death year instantly. See how to search Find a Grave by name.
• Family sources: funeral cards, family Bibles, and the backs of photos often carry exact dates.

With even an approximate year, you can pick the right method below instead of searching everything at once.

Recent deaths (about 2000–today): Legacy.com and funeral homes

Most modern obituaries are published online rather than only in print:

1. Legacy.com hosts obituaries for thousands of newspapers and funeral homes. Searching is free — enter the name, filter by state, and sort by date. You don't need the paid features to read most notices.
2. Funeral home websites publish obituaries free and often keep them up for decades. Google the person's name plus the town plus "obituary" — the funeral home page frequently outranks everything else.
3. Local newspaper sites keep recent obituaries outside their paywalls more often than regular articles. Worth a direct check.

A plain Google search — full name in quotes, plus town or state — solves a surprising share of recent obituary hunts in one step.

Mid-1900s deaths: FamilySearch's free obituary collections

FamilySearch.org (free, account required, never any payment) has indexed tens of millions of U.S. obituaries, with especially good coverage from roughly the 1940s through the 1990s — exactly the era that's too old for Legacy.com and too recent for many historic newspaper archives.

Search from the main Records search: enter the name, set the record type to obituaries or add a death year range, and try the state. The index usually gives you the death date, newspaper, and the names of relatives mentioned — often enough to reconstruct the family group even when the full scan isn't attached.

Older deaths: Chronicling America and free newspaper archives

For obituaries before about 1963, free historic newspaper archives are your best friend:

• Chronicling America (Library of Congress, chroniclingamerica.loc.gov) — millions of digitized newspaper pages, fully text-searchable, completely free, no account. Put the name in quotes, narrow by state and year range, and check spelling variants.
• Google News Archive (news.google.com/newspapers) — free scans of hundreds of papers. The search function is weak, so it works best when you already know the paper and approximate date and can browse issue by issue.
• State digital newspaper projects — most states run their own free archive, and their coverage often beats the national sites for local papers. Examples: the California Digital Newspaper Collection, New York State Historic Newspapers, the Portal to Texas History, and Hoosier State Chronicles in Indiana. Search "[state] digital newspaper archive."

Our full guide to searching old newspapers free covers all of these in more depth, including foreign-language papers.

The library card trick: free access to paid databases

Paid services — Newspapers.com, GenealogyBank, NewspaperArchive, ProQuest Obituaries — hold enormous obituary collections, and you can often use them without paying:

• Your public library likely licenses one or more of these. Check the library website under "research databases" or "genealogy" — many offer remote access from home with just your card number.
• In-library access: most FamilySearch Centers (free, worldwide) and many libraries offer free in-building access to premium genealogy databases.
• Free trials exist at the paid sites if you need a single record; just set a reminder to cancel.

The paid sites are legitimate and convenient — the point is simply to exhaust the free routes first, because they very often hold the same page.

Free obituary sources at a glance

Search tactics that find the "unfindable" obituary

When a name brings back nothing, the obituary usually exists — the search is just missing it:

• Try initials and nicknames. "Wm." for William, "Jas." for James, and nicknames like Polly (Mary) or Jack (John) were standard in print.
• Search married women under the husband's name. For much of the 20th century, a woman's obituary ran as "Mrs. Harold Jenkins." Search the husband, and check our death records guide for ways to recover her maiden name.
• Expect OCR errors. Old newsprint scans misread letters constantly — try swapping similar letters (Sarah/Sarab, Olson/Olsen) or search a distinctive phrase like the street name instead.
• Widen the geography. Obituaries often ran in the town where the person grew up as well as where they died, and in the county-seat paper rather than the village one.
• Search the survivors. If the deceased's name fails, search an unusually named child or sibling — obituaries index every name in them.

Read the obituary like a genealogist

An obituary is one of the densest family records that exists. A single notice can name a spouse, parents, all surviving children with their married names and towns, siblings, grandchildren counts, church, occupation, and burial place. Work through it systematically:

1. List every named person and their stated relationship.
2. Note married names of daughters and sisters — these unlock the next generation of searches.
3. Note the cemetery, then pull the burial record (see free cemetery records via our Find a Grave guide).
4. Translate the relationships precisely. If the obituary says the deceased was "survived by a grand-nephew," and you descend from that grand-nephew, the free CousinChart calculator tells you exactly what the deceased was to you — no guessing.

FAQ

What is the best completely free obituary search?

For recent deaths, Legacy.com and funeral home websites; for mid-1900s deaths, FamilySearch's free obituary collections; for anything older, Chronicling America and your state's digital newspaper project. All are free — pick based on the death date.

Can I find an obituary without knowing the death date?

Yes. First pin the date using the Social Security Death Index (free on FamilySearch, covers most U.S. deaths after 1962) or a Find a Grave headstone photo, then search newspaper archives in that date window.

Are old obituaries online for free?

Millions are. Chronicling America (Library of Congress) offers free searchable newspapers back to the 1700s, Google News Archive hosts free scans, and most states run free digital newspaper collections with strong local coverage.

Why can't I find my relative's obituary anywhere?

Not everyone got one — obituaries were paid notices in many papers, so some families ran only a two-line death notice or nothing at all. Also try spelling variants, initials, the husband's name for married women, and papers in the town where the person grew up.

Do I have to pay for Newspapers.com or GenealogyBank to see obituaries?

Often not. Many public libraries provide free access to these or equivalent databases — sometimes from home with your library card. Check your library's research-databases page before subscribing.

How do I figure out how I'm related to people named in an obituary?

Trace the path person by person ("the deceased was my great-grandmother's brother"), then enter that path into the free relationship calculator at CousinChart. It returns the exact term — granduncle, first cousin twice removed, and so on — instantly.

Found the obituary? Now map the family

An obituary is a family tree in paragraph form — every survivor listed is a branch. As you add each name to your research, use the free CousinChart relationship calculator to work out exactly how they connect to you, and follow the trails into death records, cemetery records, and old newspapers. One good obituary, fully mined, can advance your tree by a whole generation in an evening.