With over 150,000 tombstones in local Allen County graveyards and over 700,000 obituaries published in local newspapers since 1837 we are posting links to online indexes. Some information is added to our People pages with links to published obituary pages at local Funeral Homes. FamilySearch.org declared 2014: The Year of the Obituaries so more obituaries may eventually be available online. Modern obituaries since the early 2000s should be easily found using a search engine including obituary with the name of the person that are often kept on the funeral home websites and websites like Find A Grave and BillionGraves have volunteers adding obituaries along with tombstone photos and sometimes biographies.

Fort Wayne Newspapers Obituaries lists over 6,000 online obituaries and includes a list of links to local funeral homes with online obituaries.

The Allen County Department of Health Annual Reports show over 5,000 deaths per year in Allen County which averages around 14 deaths a day. Not every death is recorded with a published obituary. Current death records are recorded at the court house of the county where the person died. Trying to list every obituary every day for Allen County on this page is not practical at this time.

September 15, 2023 post by the Allen County Department of Health on Facebook:

We track and monitor information about a variety of topics affecting public health in Allen County, including deaths. #FridayFacts

To find more data ---> 2022 Annual Report

[ the 2022 reports lists 5,176 deaths and 7,322 births veruss 5,611 deaths and 7,387 births in 2021 ]

Obit Magnet - searches online published obituaries

Make Obituary Searches Easier with Obit Magnet by ResearchBuzz on October 24, 2022 states: The amount of genealogy content on the Internet is amazing, but it’s a bit hard to search on the open Web. Especially if you’re doing something like looking up obituary notices and your relatives have common names. I can’t give your relatives new names, but I can make a tool that narrows down the scope of your results and makes finding obituaries easier. So I did. It’s called Obit Magnet and you can find it at https://searchgizmos.com/obit-magnet/ . It’s easy to use. Enter a name and the date of death for the person you’re searching for, and Obit Magnet makes searches for that name for Google Books (newspapers only), Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive.com, and Chronicling America. Instead of making the searches open-ended, though, Obit Magnet makes searches for a 7-day span after the date of death and a 15-span if the 7-day span doesn’t catch the obituary. 

Obituary records found in Fort Wayne, Ind., newspapers, 1841-1900 by Monroe, Barbara J on the Internet Archive

Obituaries, like all things online, are subject to existing copyright laws. Generally anything published prior to 1923 is in the public domain and anyone is allowed to re-publish. The problem with obituaries is who owns the copyright? Did the deceased write it before they died? Did the family, a funeral home, or newspaper employee write the obituary? That answer and the date published determine who, if anyone, owns the copyright.

The Legal Genealogist is a great resource for genealogy and the law. Judy G. Russell has many blogs on Copyright and genealogy. For obituary copyright information read her blog: Copyright and the post-1963 obit posted September 13, 2012 and Copyright and the obit - A society’s transcriptions raise questions posted on September 12, 2012 by Judy G. Russell.

The Alfred B. Rondot collection at The Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indianahas 35 volumes of handwritten information published in 1977 of French and Swiss family information for Allen County residents digitized on the Internet Archive. Four volumes not in alphabetical order contain handwritten obituaries and more copied from local newspapers.

1. French and related obituaries, Allen County, Indiana volume 35, 1977 A-L
2. French and other deaths and obituaries Allen County, Indiana, volume 30, 1977 E-L
3. French and other deaths and obituaries Allen County, Indiana, volume 31, 1977 M-R
4. French and related obituaries, Allen County, Indiana, volume 36, 1977 M-Z

There is an Index to tri-state obituaries (Indiana-Ohio-Michigan) from the Fort Wayne journal gazette ... book at The Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Funeral Home Records, Fort Wayne, Indiana on ACGSI.org is a compilation of funeral record index information from C. M. Sloan & Sons Mortuary Records, 1903-1974, Tom Mungovan Funeral Home Records, Peltier Mortuary Records 1874-1938, Wellman's Funeral Home Mortuary Records 1917-1964 and others.

I Seek Dead People:Using America’s GenealogyBank to Find Obituaries and More! posted Feb 17, 2022 by Allen County Public Library on YouTube
America’s GenealogyBank is one of the twenty-four on-site databases at The Genealogy Center. It contains database collections of Historical Newspapers (1690-1922), Historical Books (1749-1900), Historical Documents (1789-1994), and America's Obituaries (1977-current). The obituary components of this resource make it a particularly valuable tool for genealogy research. Presented by: Allison DePrey Singleton Handout: https://static.libnet.info/images/pdfs/acpl/Genealogy/I_Seek_Dead_People_Handout.pdf

Obituary Indexes

1. Allen County Obituary Index, 1837-Present Date is a two part index with over 700,000 records from local Northeast Indiana and Northwest Ohio from Fort Wayne newspapers available on microfilm at The Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The book for part one is shown above. The results page states: Copies of specific obituaries may be ordered by emailing Genealogy@ACPL.Info with the complete citation as found in the index. Cost is $2.50 per obituary, billed at the time of mailing. Response time is typically 4-6 weeks. Your complete name and mailing address must be included with your request. Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana volunteers continue to review old newspapers for obituaries missed by earlier volunteers as well as adding the typical 20 to 50 new daily newspaper obituaries to The Genealogy Center Index. Includes names from multi-volume books: Obituary records as found in Fort Wayne, Indiana newspapers which has many volumes from 1841 to 1993 with the first volume shown above.
2. Evangelical Messenger Obituary Index also at the The Genealogy Center, is a weekly publication covering January 1848 through December 1931, with names of decedents and spouses in over 151,000 entries.
3. The Indiana State Library in partnership with Newspapers.com has public domain newspapers available and much more via their INSPIRE service web site.
4. The Newspaper Archive is available via the Allen County Public Library. You can search all states, by Indiana 1800-2016 or Fort Wayne 1841-2012.
5. Obituaries are on local Funeral Home web pages.
6. Obituary Index on INGenWeb states: The alphabetical index contains obituaries from around the country for people who have Indiana connections. They request all submissions contain a source which includes city, state and date of publication and currently have over 10,000 obituary published.
7. ProQuest for Allen County Public Librarycard holders searches newspapers and more online.
8. Newspaper obituaries are available online back to the early 2000s on Legacy.com.
9. Search Gizmos at ResearchBuzz has newspaper searching tools labeled Tag: Newspapers.com includes Narrow Down Your Obituary Searches With Obit Magnet Trying to find an obituary? Obit Magnet takes a name and death date and generates obituary search URLs for Google Books (newspapers only), Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive.com, and Chronicling America. Enter the name of the person you’re searching and the day, month, and year of their death. Obit Magnet will generate news searches for a span of 7 days and 15 days after death.

Obituaries Online:

1. Fort Wayne Newspapers on Legacy.com go back to 2003, but may require payment for archived obituaries.
2. Huntertown Historical Society has obituaries, photos, stories and more on their web site.
3. Most local funeral homes now have recent obituaries online often with a color photo of the deceased, personal memorials and sometimes a photo gallery.
4. Some local newspapers have online obituaries and often have more details in their version of the same obituaries.
5. Newspapers.com has over 22 million clippings tagged as obituaries from volunteers. Over 112,000 for Allen County, Indiana obituaries with over 105,000 Fort Wayne and the rest tagged for Monroeville from the The Monroeville Breeze newspaper.
6. Obituary abstracts from 2006 and 2007 were formerly posted by Richard Berkheiser for his Newspaper Tidbits Project on the Allen County, Indiana Rootsweb Mailing List.
7. Obituaries In Fort Wayne - Indiana from Echovita on Facebook posts some obituaries daily. Every Facebook page has a magnifying glass search icon at the top of the page.
8. The Waynedale News Obituaries goes back to 2001.

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