I am hoping someone on this list may know the answer. I am looking for obituaries in Florida, California, Indianapolis and Illinois from to-day and backwards. Cheers from Valerie in sunny Sydney

It depends on how far back you want to go. Current obituaries for the past 30 days are free at http://legacy.com and include a major portion of newspapers in the USA. Many people who pass away in Florida have obituaries in the New York Times because they have gone to Florida for health conditions, but still have friends and family in New York. Since the NewYork Times is a major US newspaper, chances are excellent that you can get access to it for free from a library in Australia, hopefully from home. Call your local library reference desk for assistance with that. I also believe that Mormon Family History centers subscribe to some of the pay sites that have older obituaries. Check with your nearest one (if there is one close enough to you there), to see if they carry any of the Newspaper Archive databases for patrons...Proquest and Newsbank are the ones that come to mind which libraries carry. There are many pay sites, as well, but if you are creative about it, you can find other ways to get the same obituaries for free, although not as easily as those of us living in the US. For example, Ancestry.com also has obituaries for selected locales and the FHC's usually have access to it. Also check Joe Beine's site http://deathindexes.com for the very best resource there is to locate death index and obituary sites for the USA. More information about all of the above, including information about library sites with home access to genealogy databases, is at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~thecohens/resources.html Search engines also sometimes keep cached copies of older obituaries, especially ones relatively recent. Try using your favorite search engine, in case someone has posted a needed obit somewhere on the web. If that becomes tedious, try the focused genealogy tool at http://www.sfgenealogy.com/php/focus/youfocus.php On 1/1/11, Valerie B Garton <[email protected]> wrote: > ... > I am looking for obituaries in Florida, California, Indianapolis and > Illinois from to-day and backwards.