Organization: While most of these obits cover 1980 through 2000 for the Southern NH & Northern Mass area, there are other locales included as well. None of these collections are complete but with almost ½ million obits it is likely someone that died in this area or a relative will be included in our collection.
Credits: Obviously much work by all volunteer members of the society both past and present went into producing these pages. The names are too numerous to mention and many contributors were not recorded. A huge thank you to all involved in this project over the last 30 years.
Indexing: Most women are indexed by both their maiden name (if available) and their married name(s) (if married). The first entry will be in the format of “MarriedName-MaidenName,FirstNames” and a second entry of “MaidenName, FirstNames MarriedName”. There are some exceptions such as when the only index was, for instance, Mrs. Jacques Demers. This particular group of exceptions has all the entries alphabetized under Mrs. Not everyone indexing these obits followed the preceding rules.
As a result of so many people being involved in this project over so many years, not all data entry was consistent. There are variations in capitalization, periods after initials, quotes around nicknames, etc. that were standardized as much as possible. In general, ST, St, and St. were changed to ST_NAME. O’Name was changed to ONAME. Likewise De La Name went to DELANAME and Van De Name went to Van_De_Name. Be mindful that spaces, apostrophes, dashes, and periods were removed from last names in most cases.
Multiple Links: Many times there is more than one image/link for a given name. It may be a completely different obit, the same obit but in a different newspaper, an obit that runs over two pages or, just another copy of the obit. Many newspapers offered a free obit which had minimal information and then a more extensive one for a fee. Both obits are often linked. Keep in mind that the New England states are near one another and the obit may appear in an adjacent state.
Errors: Please report all broken links, bad links, bad data etc. to [email protected]. Please include “obit correction” in the subject line and enough information in the email so that we can find and correct the issue. Your name and phone/email will be essential.
The Locale/Newspaper field typically includes a city, state and then newspaper. The state is the two letter code for the state. All of the data items are optional, there could be all three but there could be none. A typical entry might be Lawrence, MA The Eagle Tribune.
The date field is often a range of dates. The dates in this field are approximate and have not been validated for every obituary they reference. Usually the obituary itself will be dated.
Copyright: While the original obit is property of the deceased’s relatives, the funeral home, or the newspaper in which it appeared, all pages and compilations on this website are property of ACGS –Manchester NH and for the personal use of our members only. The obits reprints themselves are provided free of charge for research purposes.
