Obituaries in Oshkosh, WI | Oshkosh Northwestern (2024)

FAQs

How do I find a local obituary? ›

Many funeral homes publish obituaries on their websites. These can usually be located with a Google search on the person's name. Local genealogical and historical societies, public libraries, and some newspaper publishers maintain clipping files of obituaries.

An obituary is written to tell the story of your loved one. These will often be in the funeral program. There will even be a part of the funeral where the obituary will be silently read by everyone in attendance at the funeral. It is something you and your family should be patient with when you are writing it.

The Web site hosts obituaries and memorials for more than 70 percent of all U.S. deaths. Legacy.com hosts obituaries for more than three-quarters of the 100 largest newspapers in the U.S., by circulation.

Obituaries in Massachusetts and other parts of New England can generally be found in the local town or county papers. Many obituaries for Boston and the surrounding area can be found in: Boston Athenaeum. Index of Obituaries in Boston Newspapers, 1704-1800.

As funeral homes across America post obituaries to their respective funeral home website, The Obituary App organizes them all into particular cities. Now, a user can look at all the obituaries posted by multiple funeral homes in one place.

All you need to navigate an online obituary finder is the full name of the deceased (although other criteria, like birth date and location, can help narrow down your search.) If the person you're searching for passed away in your same city, it can also be helpful to visit your local mortuary's website.

Local newspapers, obituary pages, and social media can help you determine whether someone recently died. States and the U.S. government have online death records (sometimes called death indexes) for deaths within the past 50 years or so. To find out if you're in someone's will, you may want to visit a probate court.

North Dakota newspaper The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead ran what is certainly one of the shortest obituaries ever published. Accompanying a photograph and name of local resident Douglas Legler, the obit, which ran Wednesday, had just two simple words: “Doug died.”

Most people hire writers to tackle their obituary. While there's nothing wrong with this, there's something far more impactful about telling your story in your own voice. There are a few great reasons to take this on, and you'll be glad that you did.

Usually people include names of a spouse, parents, children (with any spouse's names listed in parenthesis), grandchildren and great grandchildren. You may choose to list grandchildren and great grandchildren individually by name, or simply include the number of each.

Are obituaries public domain? ›

Copyright and Obituaries. To be clear, obituaries are protected by copyright. They are creative works of expression that are fixed into a tangible medium of expression. Both the text and the images that make up an obituary are protected by copyright (even if the facts and information are not).

Two state-level California Death Indexes can be found at Ancestry.com (a database anyone can access from any library branch and Central Library) or FamilySearch.org (a free internet database).

However, many of the county libraries in South Carolina have special indexes for obituaries from local newspapers and may have the newspapers on microfilm. See the LibGuide at statelibrary.sc.libguides.com/sc-obituary-resources for information on how libraries help users with information in this field.

New York Public Library subscribes to many databases that can help researchers locate obituaries and death notices. The most useful are our newspaper databases. Oftentimes obituaries can be located by entering a person's name and week of death into the newspapers databases.