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Obituary guide
How to find an obituary in Illinois
For a recent death, start with the funeral home's website and the obituary page of the Chicago Tribune or your local daily. For an older death, the Illinois State Archives' death indexes help you pin down the date, and then you can find the obituary in digitized papers or on microfilm.
What to have ready
- The person's full name, including a maiden name or nickname
- The approximate date of death and the city or county where they died
- Their age or birth year
- Names of close relatives
Knowing the county narrows your search the most. The State Archives' death certificate index can be searched by county.
Where to look, by when the person died
| When the person died | Where to look |
|---|---|
| Last few years | The funeral home's website; the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Daily Herald (suburban Chicago), Pantagraph (Bloomington) and Rockford Register Star obituary pages; Legacy.com |
| 1990s to recent decades | Newspaper databases at your public library. Chicago Public Library cardholders can search the Chicago Tribune from 1849 to 2016 and the Chicago Defender from 1910 to 2010. |
| Older or historic | The Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections; the Illinois Newspaper Project look-up service; the State Archives' Statewide Death Index, pre-1916 |
| Official death record | The state has kept death certificates since 1916. The State Archives' death certificate index, 1916–1972, can help you find the date. See how to order an Illinois death certificate. |
Major newspapers' obituary pages
- Chicago Tribune
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, on Legacy.com)
- The Pantagraph (Bloomington, on Legacy.com)
- Rockford Register Star (on Legacy.com)
- Peoria Journal Star (on Legacy.com)
Recent listings are open to read. Older articles may need a subscription.
Libraries and archives
- Chicago Public Library offers full-text archives of the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Defender, along with genealogy databases.
- Illinois Newspaper Project at the University of Illinois will look up an obituary at no charge if you have an exact citation, or if you know the date and place of death and it has a paper that may have covered it. If not, staff will help you find a library that does.
- Illinois State Archives in Springfield has an ongoing, incomplete index of deaths recorded before 1916.
Timeline expectations
- Recent obituaries usually appear online within days, often before the service.
- Digitized coverage varies by town and year.
- The Illinois Newspaper Project says it usually answers obituary look-ups within one week.
Tips
- Start with the State Archives death index to get an exact date and county. Then the newspaper search is quick.
- For Chicago deaths, check both the Tribune and the Defender, which the library describes as a nationally significant African American newspaper.
- The pre-1916 index is incomplete. If someone isn't there, try the county clerk where they died.
Last verified:
Note: Coverage years, fees and web addresses are set by the libraries, archives and newspapers listed and can change. PublicLibraries.com is not affiliated with them.
More about Illinois obituaries
Homicides and coroner's inquests, 1870–1930
If someone died violently or suddenly, a police or coroner's record may name them even when no obituary was printed. The Illinois State Archives has two indexes you can search online:
- Chicago Police Department Homicide Record Index, 1870–1930: 12,705 entries. Records usually give the victim, the date, the location, the manner of death and who was responsible. The originals are at the Illinois Regional Archives Depository at Northeastern Illinois University.
- Cook County Coroner's Inquest Record Index, 1872–1911: 74,160 entries, December 1872 to November 1911. Natural deaths aren't included because the county clerk recorded those.
Northwestern University's Homicide in Chicago, 1870–1930 project offers the police records as a searchable database of 11,018 cases.