Welcome
Welcome to the Huntingdon County Historical
Society’s obituary search engine. One of the
important resources in our research library is an extensive collection
of obituaries. Most date from the late 19th and the 20th
centuries. They greatly extend the information available in our card
index of death and marriage notices from newspapers, which are heavily
19th century.
Our obituary scrapbooks were compiled by a number
of individuals, who had their own reasons for saving the particular
obituaries they clipped from the newspaper. Thus, we do not claim that
the collection itself is complete or comprehensive.
We do, however, offer a comprehensive index to all
27 volumes of these various obituary collections. For that, we need to
thank Anna Mary Sheffield, a regular library volunteer, who entered the
data into the computer, including all the maiden names given in the
obituaries.
Searching the Index
You can search the index in the following ways:
• Enter a complete name (first, last, middle initial) to see if
there is an obituary for that individual name. The drawback of
this type of search is that if any part of the name is wrong, or
entered in the wrong field, you will not get a match.
• Enter just the last name to obtain a complete list of persons
with that surname.
• If you do not know a woman’s married name, enter her first and
maiden name, putting the maiden name in the middle initial field.
This may yield her full married name. |
Be creative
Try to be creative in your searching. An unusual
first name may be enough to produce the desired response. A woman’s
first name and the initial of her maiden name may yield a response that
includes her married name. Because the index was created as a
tab-separated Word document, rather than a data base, any titles that
precede a person’s first name will fall into the first name field. Thus,
it is possible to obtain a list of all doctors’ obituaries by entering
Dr. in the first name field.
Get a copy
Obituaries will be copied and sent to you for a fee
of $5.00 each. To determine if the “John Smith” listed in our index is
the one whose obit you want, e-mail us with additional information that
will confirm that he’s the right person: wife’s name, date of birth or
death, children’s names, etc. We’ll get back to you promptly.
Search
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