Obituaries in Erie, PA | Erie Times-News (2024)

FAQs

How do I find an obituary in Pennsylvania? ›

Find an Obituary. The Cremation Society of Pennsylvania ® online obituary search tool gives you access to obituaries from thousands of locations across North America. You can search by first or last name, state and publication date.

Many funeral homes publish obituaries on their websites. These can usually be located with a Google search on the person's name. Local genealogical and historical societies, public libraries, and some newspaper publishers maintain clipping files of obituaries.

Obituaries are not required by law , so the deceased's family might have chosen to forego publishing one. Publishing an obituary can be expensive , and the funds may be unavailable. The deceased has few family members or friends , so there might have, unfortunately, been no need for an obituary.

​County Courthouses in ​​Pennsylvania

Courthouses are important places to look for birth, marriage and death records. These are usually found in the Register of Wills office in each county. Records in the Recorder of Deeds offices can also be useful.

Legacy.com hosts obituaries for more than three-quarters of the 100 largest newspapers in the U.S., by circulation. The site attracts more than 30 million unique visitors per month and is among the top 40 trafficked websites in the world. Legacy Inc. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

It's very expensive to put an obituary in newspapers. It could also mean the family chooses to keep it private. Sometimes families only want their closest friends to know about it. They don't want alot of people who don't know them that well, to feel obligated to attend a wake or funeral.

When writing an obituary, leave out details that could be used for identity theft, such as the deceased's date and place of birth, middle name, maiden name and mother's maiden name. And don't include the deceased's home address.

Obituaries and death notices can be published by alumni organizations, religious or community institutions, and professional organizations, or online.

Why can't I find my friends' obituary? ›

There could be several reasons why you're having difficulty finding an obituary. The person you're looking for may not have had an obituary, the newspaper that published it could have gone out of business, or it could have never been saved or digitized.

To be clear, obituaries are protected by copyright. They are creative works of expression that are fixed into a tangible medium of expression. Both the text and the images that make up an obituary are protected by copyright (even if the facts and information are not).