Maine’s newspapers have reported deaths since the 1780s, when the state was still part of Massachusetts. The Maine State Library has digitized a large share of its historic papers and offers free obituary lookups in selected titles.
Maine obituaries in historic newspapers
The Falmouth Gazette, first printed in 1785 in what is now Portland, was the first newspaper in the District of Maine. Early notices were short and often appeared under “Deaths” alongside shipping news, which matters in a coastal state: deaths at sea, in shipwrecks and in distant ports were reported in the home-town paper, sometimes months after the fact.
As county seats and mill towns grew in the 1800s, weekly papers in places like Bangor, Augusta, Belfast and Ellsworth carried increasingly detailed obituaries, including Civil War casualties and the deaths of lumbermen, sailors and farmers. Many Franco-American communities in the late 1800s and early 1900s also had French-language papers, which are worth checking for families from Quebec and Acadia.
The Maine Newspaper Project at the State Library has digitized well over 100,000 pages, published through the Digital Maine Repository and Chronicling America, and three further collections of digitized Maine papers are on the Internet Archive.
Where to find Maine obituaries
Digitized Maine newspapers
- Maine Newspaper Project, Digital Maine — Free digitized Maine newspapers, plus links to other digitized Maine titles.
Archives and libraries
- Genealogy services, Maine State Library — Microfilm holdings and staff obituary lookups when you know the date and place of death.
- Maine State Archives — State vital records and other government records useful for confirming a death.
- Maine Newspapers, FamilySearch Research Wiki — Volunteer-maintained guide to Maine newspaper archives, indexes and microfilm, with county-by-county links.
Nationwide newspaper archives
- Chronicling America, Library of Congress — Free digitized newspapers from every state. Narrow a search to Maine and the years you need.
- Google News Archive — Free scans of hundreds of older newspapers, browsable by title and date.
- Internet Archive newspapers — Free digitized newspapers and microfilm uploaded by libraries.
- FamilySearch — Free obituary indexes, death records and the Social Security Death Index (free account).
- Find a Grave — Volunteer-built cemetery memorials, many with transcribed obituaries.
- Newspapers.com — Large subscription archive of U.S. papers. Many public libraries offer free access.
- GenealogyBank — Subscription archive of historic newspapers and modern obituaries.
- Legacy.com — Obituaries published since about 2000 in most U.S. daily newspapers.
Tips for finding an obituary in Maine
- Pin down the date and place first. A death index or death certificate gives the exact date and county, and then you only need to search the local papers for the following week or two.
- Search more than one town. Obituaries often ran in the paper where the person was born or had lived before, not just where they died. Small-town weeklies sometimes published a notice weeks later.
- Look beyond the word “obituary.” Older papers reported deaths under headings like “Died,” “Deaths,” local news and personals columns, funeral notices and cards of thanks. See death notices vs. obituaries.
- Try every spelling. Search initials, nicknames and misspellings, and for married women in older papers, search the husband’s name (“Mrs. John Smith”). Digitized text often misreads old type.
- Ask a librarian. Many public libraries and state archives will look up an obituary for free or a small fee, and newspaper microfilm can often be borrowed through interlibrary loan.