Genealogists rely on obituries for family history clues! Now you can use HeritageQuest to find obituary information from U.S. newspapers dating back to the 1800s. HeritageQuest pulled this information from Newspapers.com, a standalone service from Ancestry.com that focuses primarily on digititzed newspapers. Details may include:
- Name of the deceased
- Gender of the deceased
- Birth date and place and/or age at death
- Marriage date and place
- Death and/or burial date
- Residence and/or death place
- Obituary date and place
- Names of parents, spouse, children, and/or siblings
- Original publication details
DID YOU KNOW? Memorial Hall Library is working on its own Obituary Database project! It will be online, fully searchable, and include obituary information from all the newspapers in our collection that cover the Andover area. This project relies almost entirely on volunteers. If you'd like to help with this effort, we'd love to hear from you!
In addition, HeritageQuest will include a link to the digitized page on the Newspapers.com website. Please note that this link won't work unless you are logged in with a personal account to Newspapers.com and may still require upgrade to your subscription. You can, however, access Newspapers.com through the library for free by visiting https://mhl.org/databases. (As with HeritageQuest, you will need to enter an Andover library card number if you are outside the library.) From there, enter the same search terms you used to find obituary information in HeritageQuest and the digitized page should appear in your search results.
Questions? We are here to help! Stop by the Reference Desk or contact us via phone, email, or chat and we'd be happy to help find an obituary or to request one through interlibrary loan!