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Name of Deceased

1. First, try using just a last name.

For some papers, we are only able to identify the last name of the deceased within the obituary. So searching on both a last name and first name may not find an obituary or death notice that is available.

2. If you need to narrow your results, try adding a first name.

You can enter the last name and first name in any order. The search engine will retrieve obituaries and death notices that contain both words, regardless of the order in which they appear. When entering first names, keep in mind that variations that might be used -- e.g. William, Bill, Will, etc..

Examples:

  • William Smith 
  • (William or Bill) Smith

For information about other search capabilities you may wish to use, see Advanced Searching below.

Limit by Date

Another way to narrow your results is to restrict your search to a specific date range. Keep in mind that the publication date of a death notice or obituary is not the same as the date of the person's death. Most obituaries or death notices are published within two weeks of passing. Usually, entering a month and year (or even just a year) will be sufficient to narrow your search.

Examples:

  • June 2002 
  • 1984 
  • 1982-1985
Obituary Text

Another way to narrow your results is to restrict your search using keywords that would appear in the text of the obituary. Some examples of words that often appear in obituaries and are useful in narrowing searches are:

  • the name of a spouse or relative
  • the city or town where a person was born
  • the name of a person's employer
  • the college, university, or other school that a person attended

Remember to enclose phrases that you wish to match exactly in quotes (e.g. "naval academy"). For information about other search capabilities you may wish to use, see Advanced Searching.

Other Common Searches

Some users are interested in searching for obituaries or death notices of people with connections to other people, locations, companies, organizations, etc... To do this, simply enter the keywords that would appear in the text of the obituary in the Obituary Text field.

For example:

  • Searching for a home town — Enter the name of a city or town in the Obituary Text field. The search results will include all obituaries and death notices with a reference to the city or town.
  • Searching for a company name — Enter the name of a company in the Obituary Text field. The search results will include all obituaries and death notices with a reference to the company.
  • Searching for a college or university — Enter the name of a college or university in the Obituary Text field. The search results will include all obituaries and death notices with a reference to the college or university.
Advanced Searching

When two or more words are entered without surrounding quotation marks, only articles containing all of the terms will be returned. They may appear in any order and anywhere in the document.

To search for exact phrases, put quotation marks around the phrase (e.g. "Acme Corporation").

NOTE: Searching exact phrases in the Name of Deceased field is not recommended for two reasons: (1) the order in which last and first names appear often differ (e.g. "Smith, William" vs. "William Smith"), and (2) sometimes a middle initial will be included (e.g. "William E. Smith" vs. "William Smith")

For more precise control over searches, you can use the following search operators:

  • word1 AND word2 — return only articles containing both word1 and word2, in any order and anywhere in the article
  • word1 OR word2 — return only articles containing either word1, word2, or both, in any order and anywhere in the article
  • word1 NOT word2 — return only articles containing word1 and not containing word2
  • word1 ADJ word2 — return only articles containing both word1 and word2, where word1 is immediately followed by word2
  • word1 NEAR word2 — return only articles containing both word1 and word2, where word1 and word2 are next to each other (in either order)
  • word1 ADJn word2 — same as for ADJ, but "n" indicates that number of words that can separate word1 and word2
  • word1 NEARn word2 — same as for NEAR, but "n" indicates that number of words that can separate word1 and word2