New York has more digitized historic newspapers than almost any other state, including two free archives built for genealogists: NYS Historic Newspapers and Fultonhistory.com, with tens of millions of pages between them.
New York obituaries in historic newspapers
William Bradford’s New-York Gazette began in 1725, and John Peter Zenger’s New-York Weekly Journal followed in 1733. By the 1830s New York City’s penny press, led by the Sun and the Herald, printed daily columns of death notices that families paid to place, a practice that spread across the country.
Upstate, nearly every village had a weekly paper that reported deaths in surrounding towns, often with more family detail than the city dailies. New York also had a vast foreign-language press, from the German New Yorker Staats-Zeitung (1834) to the Yiddish Forverts (1897) and Italian, Polish and Spanish dailies, which ran death notices for immigrants who never appear in English-language papers.
The New York Times began publishing paid death notices and news obituaries in 1851, and its archive is one of the most searched for notable New Yorkers. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, published from 1841 to 1955, is free to search online through the Brooklyn Public Library.
Where to find New York obituaries
Digitized New York newspapers
- NYS Historic Newspapers — Free digitized papers from every region of New York State, searchable by county and title.
- Fultonhistory.com (Old Fulton NY Post Cards) — A volunteer-built free archive of tens of millions of New York newspaper pages, strongest for upstate.
- Brooklyn Newspapers (Brooklyn Public Library) — Free access to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and other Brooklyn papers.
Archives and libraries
- Milstein Division, New York Public Library — NYPL’s genealogy and local history division, with newspaper microfilm and obituary indexes.
- Genealogy, New York State Library — Guides to state death indexes and the library’s newspaper collection in Albany.
- New York Newspapers, FamilySearch Research Wiki — Volunteer-maintained guide to New York 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 New York 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 New York
- 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.
Looking for death certificates and other official records? See our guide to New York public records.