Kathleen I would like to suggest to people that want newspaper obit look ups to put as much information as they know on their request. For those who do not know, in the older newspapers there was not necessarily a Obit section as there is now. They were scattered throughout the entire paper, wherever they had a space to fill. The present format used by most papers relating to obits did not start until approximately the 50's. When a person requests a look up for 1920 in a certain area it would mean looking at the entire year of newspapers page by page, article by article, and this is very time consuming as one could expect. If they put the persons date of death in their request, it narrows the possibilities down to maybe two or three issues which makes the researchers job so much easier. I think most people that have never looked for an obit don't realize what a task it can be to find one sometimes. If the person was not a prominent citizen and widely known, their obit might just be one line in a community news section, small print, and no bold name preceeding the notice. This is not a gripe, just a helpful suggestion for our listers. Thanks Tom S

I agree and thank you for posting the suggest. Kathleen TPSWAF38OK@aol.com wrote: > Kathleen > I would like to suggest to people that want newspaper obit look ups to put as > much information as they know on their request. For those who do not know, in > the older newspapers there was not necessarily a Obit section as there is > now. They were scattered throughout the entire paper, wherever they had a > space to fill. The present format used by most papers relating to obits did > not start until approximately the 50's. > When a person requests a look up for 1920 in a certain area it would mean > looking at the entire year of newspapers page by page, article by article, > and this is very time consuming as one could expect. If they put the persons > date of death in their request, it narrows the possibilities down to maybe > two or three issues which makes the researchers job so much easier. > I think most people that have never looked for an obit don't realize what a > task it can be to find one sometimes. If the person was not a prominent > citizen and widely known, their obit might just be one line in a community > news section, small print, and no bold name preceeding the notice. > This is not a gripe, just a helpful suggestion for our listers. > Thanks > Tom S > > ==== OKROOTS Mailing List ==== > If you wish to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the Oklahoma Roots Mailing List, use > OKROOTS-l-request@rootsweb.com or OKROOTS-d-request@rootsweb.com if > you are on the Digest list. > To learn more about my world visit http://dwp.bigplanet.com/kburnett > Oklahoma Cemeteries Volunteer Website http://www.rootsweb.com/~okcemete/okcem.htm