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 1960 to 2017 Obituary logs provide an alphabetical listing giving last name, first name, age at death, date of death, and the run date in the newspaper. This alphabetical listing covers the complete date range. There is no need to search a date; just the name of the person of interest.
The 2018 to 2023 Obituary logs provide an alphabetical listing for each year in the date range. It is necessary to know the year your person of interest died or the year the obituary was likely published. For example, if an individual died in December it might be worth checking the following year data too. The listings provide the last name, first name, age at death, date of death, and the run date in the newspaper for the deceased. If you find your person of interest in either set of logs 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):
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. 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. Note: If the MS Excel spreadsheet should appear blank on opening, slide the bottom scroll bar to the left to column A and the side scroll bar up to the top to row 1. Also, the download may not have opened in your browser window and you will need to locate it in your "Download Folder" to proceed with your search.
1960 - 2017 Obituary Logs **
Each Surname group file (e.g. A to G) is about 1.5 MB of obituary data.
Use of Logs (Years 2018 to 2023):
The data were collected primarily from the Bradenton Herald and the Sarasota Herald Tribune. To search for your person of interest by year, click the link below which downloads the MS Excel file. A new Tab opens with the spreadsheet containing the log data. Click the year tab located at the bottom (or top) of the sheet and scroll through the names in the log to search for your person of interest. Note: If the MS Excel spreadsheet should appear blank on opening, slide the bottom scroll bar to the left to column A and the side scroll bar up to the top to row 1. Also, the download may not have opened in your browser window and you will need to locate it in your "Download Folder" to proceed with your search.
2018 - 2023 Obituary Logs **
The Log File is about 1.5 MB of obituary data.
** These Logs were prepared by the Manatee County Clerk of the Circuit Court & Comptroller Historical Records Library. The Manatee Genealogical Society thanks the Historical Records Library and Staff for their work in preparing these Obituary Logs and providing them to us for posting on our website.
OBTAINING A COPY OF A LOCAL AREA OBITUARY
Once you have found that an obituary exists for your person of interest (obtained from the Obituary Logs), you will usually want to obtain a copy of the published obituary. From the Log data you can use (1) a source like Ancestry's Newspapers.com. This source carries searchable copies of the local Manatee County area newspapers covering the date range 1869 to the present, or (2) contact the Manatee County Clerk of the Circuit Court & Comptroller Historical Records Library for research help. The Library files Manatee County obituaries alphabetically by last name (after 1975 only), and (3) the Manatee County Public Library also provides help in locating local area obituaries.
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. For general information on local newspaper sources the following link to LDSGenealogy.com can help - Manatee County Newspapers and Obituaries.
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 on locating a newspaper of interest, you can review information provided in this link: NEWSPAPERS. or you can check out Ancestry's U.S., Newspapers.com™ Obituary Index (1800s-current) at Newspaper Obituary Index .
