Frugal Genealogy: Obituaries

 

Libraries will often make copies of obits and mail or e-mail them to you for a very low cost (or free!). An example of this occurred several years ago while I was trying to track down an obituary for Frederika (STEEN) WILKINSON the sister-in-law of my great-great-grandmother, who died here in Washington State. I used http://www.publiclibraries.com to find the local public library for Island County where she resided for many years. Late that night, I sent an e-mail to the contact listed on the library's website to ask how I could request an obituary for Frederika, giving her date of death obtained from the Washington State Death Index on Ancestry.

The very next morning, I had an e-mail from the library stating the obituary had been found and requesting my mailing address! And like many obituaries, it was full of great genealogical information that helped further my research.

Etiquette Tip: Just because a library does a lookup for free, don't take the freebie and run. Like the rest of us, libraries are on tight budgets. When making your request, offer to pay any lookup, copy and postage fees; and if you get the request filled for free, make a donation anyway...even if you can only afford a few dollars. Every dollar counts, and you pave the way for future requests for yourself and others.

This post is part of a ten-part series on Frugal Genealogy, based on my most-requested presentation, "Frugal Genealogy, or How Not to Spend a Fortune on Your Family Tree." Each post in this series will focus on one of ten topics I discuss in my presentation, and I freely share one tip from each topic. If you would like me to speak to your group anywhere in the Pacific Northwest on this or any other subject, please contact me.