OBITUARIES
Obituaries are a rich source of material relating to our ancestors. Often they contain information such as residence, date and place of death, funeral and burial information, age, names of family members, etc. You will find a good discussion of this subject on the FamilySearch Blog "Using Obituaries to Find Your Family." Just click this link Using Obituaries.
OBITUARIES - GENERAL MANATEE COUNTY AREA
The Manatee County Historical Records Library prepared two sets of logs of local area obituaries derived from local area newspapers from about 1960 to 2017 and 2018 to 2023. The data were collected primarily from the Bradenton Herald. Also, some data were taken from the Sarasota Herald Tribune and the Tampa Tribune, however, data from these later two sources are not complete for this date range.
The Obituary Log data are contained in five MS Excel spreadsheets (see below). The logs provide an alphabetical listing giving last name, first name, age at death, date of death, and the run date in the newspaper. If you find your person of interest in the log, you can be reasonably sure that an obituary exists because the log data were taken directly from the local newspaper listings.
Use of Logs (Years 1960 to 2017):To search for your person of interest by last name, click one of the links below that contains the first letter of the individual's last name. A new Tab opens with the spreadsheet containing the log data. Click the lettered tab at the bottom (or top) of the sheet (the one with the first letter of the last name) and scroll through the names in the log to search for your person of interest.
MS Excel Obituary Logs Prepared by the Manatee County Historical Records Library**
**Obituary Logs 1960s to 2017 - Surname groupings: A to G, H to M, N to S, T to Z. Each Log File is about 1.5 MB of obituary data.
If you do not know an exact date of death, you may wish to call the Historical Records Library who files Manatee County obituaries alphabetically by last name (after 1975 only): 941-741-4070. For more detail on obtaining obituary information, visit the following Manatee County Library Link Historical Records Library
You should also consider using/contacting other local libraries in this general area. Sarasota County Libraries can be of considerable help. You should review the Library Link Sarasota County Libraries - Obituaries on how to find an obituary through Sarasota County Libraries.
OBITUARIES - OUTSIDE THE LOCAL AREA
Locating obituaries in other areas can be accomplished by contacting Libraries in the geographical area of interest. Or you can search digital newspaper databases and historical newspaper databases from these areas. There are many searchable death and obituary indexes from newspapers that may provide information to where an obituary can be found. Some are free online. For more information review information provided in this link NEWSPAPERS.
