Judy, To find an obituary for any person, go to the "Funeral Net" site: http://www.funeralnet.com/search.html When you get the funeral homes available for that town or county, write or e-mail the possible funeral homes, asking if your person's service was held there. Make sure you give as much information as possible. Many of these funeral homes file them by date, so give the closest date you can, and their full names, if possible. When a person dies, an informant who is generally a close family member, gives the vital information to the funeral home. (They attach the information card to the funeral paperwork.) The funeral home usually gives the information to the closest area newspaper for an obituary. They probably won't have the actual newspaper obituary, but they have the original paperwork. Often, the informant's address is given, giving you an extra avenue to research. Quite often, funeral homes close or merge. If you are certain the person died in that area, ask if they know where the person's service might have been held, and if they know where the files might have been stored.

I'll add this to Anita's good information (thanks Anita for the Web site). You can use the cemetery information also. I've found several of those cemeteries are still maintained and with sextons (is that term still used?). Whomever maintains the cemetery can tell you a lot sometimes...such as where your ancestor is buried (lot and block), even if the plot is unmarked. They might even be able to tell you which funeral home now has a defunct or merged funeral home's records. One particular search of mine was for a g-grandmother's burial site (using information gained from a microfilmed copy of the obit from a library). The grave never had a marker placed on it and no one seemed to "remember" where she was buried. After I learned from the obit what cemetery it was, I called them. They told me where that family's plot was and which graves were unmarked. They even told me who was buried in the three unmarked graves and the approximate years those were buried. Since one of them was a child and smaller than the other two, we agreed, due to the dates, which was my g-grandmothers. It made me very happy to be able to mark her burial site at last and I know it would have pleased my grandmother who lost her mother when she was only nine. If you don't have an obit, and you have a name and date of death, contact the local newspaper OR library that keeps newspapers on microfilm, to locate the obit and send you a copy for a small fee. Some Universities have collections of old newspapers...the University of Texas at Austin, for example, has a collection of old Texas newspapers. Successful hunting! Midge Garza