Read recent and archived obituaries and memorial notices from The Sharon Herald. (2024)

FAQs

How do I find a local obituary? ›

Many funeral homes publish obituaries on their websites. These can usually be located with a Google search on the person's name. Local genealogical and historical societies, public libraries, and some newspaper publishers maintain clipping files of obituaries.

The obituary is a longer, more detailed look at the life of the deceased and the death notice is merely a compilation of relevant facts. The obituary also includes those essential details but it expands on them to provide a more complete look at the deceased's life experiences.

Find an Obituary. The Cremation Society of Pennsylvania ® online obituary search tool gives you access to obituaries from thousands of locations across North America. You can search by first or last name, state and publication date.

An obituary (obit for short) is an article about a recently deceased person. Newspapers often publish obituaries as news articles. Although obituaries tend to focus on positive aspects of the subject's life, this is not always the case.

Read The Paper or Watch The Local News

If you receive a physical newspaper, review the obituaries section to see who recently passed. Searching for someone who died more than 30 days ago? Turn to sites like Google News Archives, US News Archives, or International News Archives.

MyObits: Obituary Listings on the App Store.

Birth and Death Records

Pennsylvania residents can access these records free of charge through Ancestry.com Pennsylvania.

Applications are available upon request at the funeral home.

Certified copies are $20.00 each and only available locally up until 90 days from the date of death. After 90 days the certificate is filed with the state of Pennsylvania and certified copies may take four to six weeks to obtain.

To be clear, obituaries are protected by copyright. They are creative works of expression that are fixed into a tangible medium of expression. Both the text and the images that make up an obituary are protected by copyright (even if the facts and information are not).

Why does it cost so much to post an obituary? Publishing an obituary in the newspaper is expensive because of the limited space papers have. Newspapers value every inch of each page, so they must charge to use that limited space for an obituary.

When someone dies, do you have to put a notice in the paper? ›

When there is not a local newspaper, the estate notice must be published in any newspaper that is in circulation in the county. The estate notice is part of the probate process. It is the official notification to alert creditors and debtors of the probate of a deceased person's estate.

You are under no legal obligation to take out a death notice or obituary. Think of the latter as a final gift to your loved one—a celebration of who they were and the legacy they created. The former is more of a courtesy to give people information so they too can honor and memorialize the dearly departed.

Two state-level California Death Indexes can be found at Ancestry.com (a database anyone can access from any library branch and Central Library) or FamilySearch.org (a free internet database).

Finding a current obituary should be as easy as a simple internet search on your favorite browser. Begin by entering the name of the person, the word obituary, and “Florida” into your favorite search engine.

Obituaries in Massachusetts and other parts of New England can generally be found in the local town or county papers. Many obituaries for Boston and the surrounding area can be found in: Boston Athenaeum. Index of Obituaries in Boston Newspapers, 1704-1800.