Obituaries are very handy for genealogical purposes as well as a good source of information for journalists. They can also be helpful to private investigators and the police as they conduct their daily duties. This evidently shows how important obituaries are making it necessary to keep them for people search purposes. This article will show you how to do an obituary search in California.

Obituaries basically communicate on someone’s death. Death notice only contain basic information like name of the person, their place of residence, plus date of death. Obituaries on the other hand have such details as life achievements and surviving family members.

California is a huge state and searching for obituary information from the state might take longer than from any other smaller state. By following certain guidelines, it is possible to get the same response as in smaller state even in California. These guidelines will help minimise time spent looking through countless databases whether digital or print.

California Obituary Searches

Here are a few guidelines to follow in conducting an obituary search in California:

• Gather as much details on the person whose obituary you are looking for as possible. Other important details excluding the name would be their place of residence and also their place and date of death. This information will help in pinpointing your search to newspapers who are most likely to have published the obituary.
• Try to locate the name with all the free online obituary websites out there by searching for them from search engines. You can try leading search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo.
• If finding the obituary from an online obituary platform prove difficult, yielding no results, you can try searching for newspapers that might have published the obituary. This may seem like an impossible task most importantly if the person was living in a big city where there are numerous dailies and weeklies.

Public Library Obituary Searches in California

Public Libraries in California can be very handy in an obituary search in the state. They are one of the major storehouses or repositories of newspaper collections that date back decades. They also boast of trained staff who are highly skilled in conducting all kinds of searches.

These libraries are not government, schools or university libraries. If there is a library that you can’t seem to locate from those listed on the site, it might be that it is listed in another name or might be part of a much larger library system.

The following are examples of California Libraries with information on how to get the best out of tem as far as obituary searches are concerned.

Los Angeles Public Library

This library does not conduct obituary searches, however you can utilize the services of a genealogist which comes at a cost. You select them from the list that the library will offer. Los Angeles newspapers usually have obituaries of celebrities. It’s only the smaller community newspapers that publish more obituaries and there are countless of them found in the 88 cities found Los Angeles county.

Fresno County Public Library

There is a death index from here available in microfilm that you can search from for the whole state from 1905 to 1995. There are also links to leading to other indexes like RootsWeb.com, from 1940 to 1997, the Social Security Death Index, (listing deaths from 1962 to present).

Edmonton Public Library

There is a very big database of obituaries found in this library which are on microfilm. These obituaries range from 1903 to the present moment. You can access these in person from the Stanley A. Milner Library. They are also accessible online from the search tool offered by the library. Searches can be done with a name and period within the occurrence of the death event.

Legacy Obituary Searches in California

Legacy is another website that offers searches on obituaries in California. Searches can be conducted from this site by selecting a metro area, county or a city. They are all listed in alphabetical order. Select one option and go with it to find your results from this site.

Tributes Obituary Searches in California

This is another website that offers obituary lookups in California. To search, use the search box offered on the site where by you can search with first name and last name. you can also search by selecting a city or town from the alphabetically listed ones from the site. There is also a link on the site to an advanced search where you can search with name, location, date of death and keywords.

Genealogy Bank Obituary Searches in California

This obituary search site can help you find obituary information on your extended family as well as conduct a genealogical research. The site also provides a search bar where you can enter the last name of the person you want to look up and search. There is also another search bar where you can search newspaper obituaries.

These are some of the options you have on how to do an obituary search in California. Try as many as you can as they all come with different data from different sources.