Mortuary Records

Mortuary and Funeral Home records are yet another little-used resource by genealogy researchers.  They are difficult to obtain, especially in hard copies from the original funeral home.  You can contact them, but often, mortuaries went out of business or were sold to another company. And many of the original records have been lost or destroyed.

Never fear though, there are a number of mortuary records that have been digitized and made available online.

Online record collections are available from subscription sites such as Ancestry.com and My Heritage – about 20 in total.

But there are other state and local collections available as well, and some of them are indexes only (from ledger books). And some are free and available online!

Here are some articles that may entice you to research Mortuary and Funeral Home records:

Have you ever looked at a mortuary record? There is an abundance of great information available! Here is a list of some of the information on such a record, besides the brand and cost of the casket:

  • Name of informant and person paying for the service
  • Cause of death
  • Address of the deceased
  • Burial location “to be”
  • In some cases – the name of the father and mother
  • Name of attending physician as well as hospital or place of death
  • Date of birth
  • Date of death
  • Date of planned burial
  • Obituary from multiple newspapers
  • Occupation
  • Birth Place
  • Marital Status
  • Gender
  • Race
  • Plus much more

Below are links to collections for the U.S. that are online and available for free. Be aware that some collections have full mortuary records, some are glorified death indexes, and some are just indexes to the actual mortuary records.

(Updated January 2023)

Good Luck and Happy Hunting!