Ohio Newspapers and Obituaries

United States   Ohio    Newspapers and Obituaries

Newspapers provide valuable genealogical information, including obituaries, marriage announcements, biographical sketches, divorce notices, and so forth. Other personal information may be included in various sections of a newspaper. There are many English and foreign-language newspapers from the early days of Ohio. Although these publications were often related to political or religious causes, they contain valuable genealogical information.

Web Sites for Obituary and Newspaper Indexes

 * Ohio Obituary Index 42 libraries are partners in the Ohio Obituary Index and are indexing old and current newspaper entries, totaling more than 1.6 million obituaries from 1810-2010. For more info:
 * Ohio Newspaper Obituaries
 * Ohio Archived Newspapers Ohio Newspaper Indexes
 * Ohio Newspaper Obituaries
 * The Ohio Historical Society newspaper collection
 * Obituary Search Engines and Indexes at Libraries, Universities and Societies scroll down to Ohio
 * Public Domain Obituaries (pre-1925) and Abstracts
 * Ohio Obituaries
 * There is a large collection of Ohio Historical Newspapers online at: Historical Newspaper Collection Ohio at Ancestry.com
 * Obituaries from the Columbus Dispatch are available from the Columbus Public Library to card holders (any Ohio resident is eligible). Request Form www.columbuslibrary.org/ebranch/index.cfm. Limit 1 request per day, 4 per month. E-mailed as a PDF.

Guides
The Ohio Historical Societyhas a centralized collection of newspapers gathered by the Ohio State Library, Ohio State University Library, the Historical Records Survey, and other institutions. Detailed guides that will help you locate these publications are:


 * Pioneer Ohio Newspapers, 1793- 1810 Contains genealogical and historical abstracts from various newspapers.


 * Pioneer Ohio Newspapers, 1802-1818: Genealogical and Historical Abstracts Contains abstracts of items mentioning local persons from several state newspapers.


 * Guide to Ohio Newspapers, 1793-1973 This is a complete bibliography of all extant newspapers published in Ohio.


 * Guide to Newspaper Holdings at the Center for Archival Collections Contains an inventory of the newspapers at the Bowling Green State University, which come from 19 northwest Ohio counties.

Many periodicals publish obituary records. These are referenced in the PERiodical Source Index (PERSI), which is described in the "Periodicals" page.

Family History Library
The Family History Library acquires published newspaper abstracts and obituary lists for Ohio. Obituary records are also listed in the Place Search of the The Family History Library Catalog under:


 * OHIO - OBITUARIES
 * OHIO - NEWSPAPERS
 * OHIO, [COUNTY] - OBITUARIES
 * OHIO, [COUNTY] - NEWSPAPERS