Research & Resources

Obituary Searches

Library staff members are always happy to assist you with research in-person at the 3rd floor Reference desk on the 3rd floor of the Joel D. Valdez Main Library. (Live outside of Pima County?) An obituary search is an important beginning for genealogy or ancestry research. An obituary search is very time consuming. One search can take over four hours because:

  • Obituaries can be published as late as two weeks after a death.
  • About 10% of Tucson deaths are not published in the newspaper.
  • The indexing of obituaries is poor.
  • An obituary is not a public record. Deaths are not required to be published.

Begin the search

See the following quick chart for coverage dates for the resources below.

Find death date.
To find an obituary, it is important to know the exact death date. The more exact the date, the better. "Sometime in September, 1965" will involve more searching of databases & microfilm than "September 28, 1965". If you do not know the death date, you may find an exact or approximate date of the obituary in question by using one or more of the following resources:
Find the obituary
An obituary usually contains text describing the life of the individual and his relatives. A death notice typically includes only the name, age, occupation and funeral home. The following resources are good places to find the actual obituary or death notice:

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About these resources

U.S. Social Security Death Index
This resource gives only the date and location of a person's death. It does not give the obituary date.
Although the vast majority of date of death entries in the SSDI dates from 1960 to the present, the index actually goes back to 1900. SSDI information is derived from records of deceased persons who possessed Social Security numbers and whose deaths were reported to the Social Security Administration. This database does not include all of the deaths in the United States, just the deaths that the Social Security Administration was informed about. Usually the Social Security Administration is informed when someone collecting Social Security dies. Some older U.S. citizens may never have received Social Security, such as retired military members, ex-federal government employees, or members of some unions. These people will not be in this database.
Use This Source:
Always search this index first, even if you have a date of death.
The SSDI offers searching by surname, given name, and social security number. The most effective search method is to search by surname and given name, limiting the search by the advanced option of the state of Arizona. If you find a match in the SSDI, record both the birth and death dates that are given.
The death date is crucial for actually locating the obituary. Unfortunately many of the SSDI entries, perhaps the majority, only list the month and year of death, not the exact date of death.
If you find an entry in the SSDI with dates that seem to match the information you have, but the place of residence at time of death is listed as somewhere outside Pima County, then it is a matter of judgment whether to search the local newspapers on microfilm for an obituary.

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Arizona Daily Star Index
The University of Arizona compiled a series of indexes to the Arizona Daily Star which covers the years 1953-1989. The Pima County Public Library collection has gaps: 1954 and 1966-1969 are missing. The Arizona Daily Star Index is located on the 3rd floor of the Joel D. Valdez Main Library. The Arizona Historical Society has 1953-58, 1960-65, and 1970-89. The University of Arizona has sets in the Main Library Information Commons and in Special Collections. A card file in the Information Commons covers the years 1966-1969.
Each volume has a list of names under the heading "Deaths." In the 1950s, these names include most of the obituaries. However, from the 1960s on, the indexes only list deaths that are news stories, i.e. accidents, murders etc. Therefore it becomes less likely that you will find a match when you search these later volumes.
If you do find a match, the Index will indicate date, page and column. If the match is a news story concerning the deceased, it is useful to also search the microfilm for an obituary in addition to the news item, usually either in the same issue or near to it in date.
Use This Source:
Use this Index if the exact date of death is unknown, the deceased died (or may have died) between 1953 and 1989, and the Social Security Death Index either has no entry or only gives the month/year of death. Although the percentage of successful searches is small, it's worth a look. In some cases, when only the name is known, but not the year, one can look in several volumes or even the whole set.

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Arizona Death Records
The Arizona Death Records (929.3791 AR47a) located in the Cele Peterson Arizona Collection on the 3rd floor of the Joel D. Valdez Main Library is a catalog of tombstones in the state. There are two volumes, plus a supplement. The two volumes go up to 1976; the supplement goes up to 1982. There are three sections of the supplement, each with an alphabetical listing of names.
Use This Source:
Use this source only if the month/year of death is unknown, and a search in the Social Security Death Index was unsuccessful. Check the main section and all three sections of the supplement. Obviously if the year of death is known to be after 1982, this source is not useful.
The catalog lists names along with birth and death dates as they appear on the tombstone. Each entry has a number code on the right corresponding to a list of cemeteries in the front of the catalog. The main section has this list at the front of the first volume. The supplement has a separate list of cemeteries at the front of the third volume.
Although the percentage of successful searches using this source tends to be very low, the few times a name has been found have proven to be breakthroughs in either finding the actual obituary or identifying an appropriate library or other resource.

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Arizona Genealogy Birth and Death Certificates
This site lets you search for microfilmed scanned images of county or state issued birth and death certificates that occurred in Arizona between 1844 and 1958. The microfilmed documents on this website are copies from the Official Archives of the State.
Obituary Daily Times
Compiled by volunteers, the ODT is a daily index of published obituaries across the world. It will provide the obituary date and name of publication it appeared in, but not the actual obituary.
The limitations of this resource are:
  • The site is free to use but its primitive search engine means location searches are problematic.
  • Soundex and MetaPhone searches will cast a wider net, as they use "sound alike" algorithms to find alternate spellings of names.
  • Pima County Public Library only has obituaries from historic Tucson newspapers. Should you be looking for obituaries from other cities, you may use ODT to locate the date and place but most likely you will be unable to get the actual obituary from Pima County Public Library.
  • For older obituaries (1940's, 1950's, etc.) ODT is somewhat limited, but is definitely improving.

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Arizona Biography/Obituary Index
The Arizona Biography-Obituary Index is a microfiche source located at Info Line on the 3rd floor of the Joel D. Valdez Main Library. Ask for it at the Information Desk. The fiche is arranged alphabetically by the last name of the subject, and it covers the years 1865-1986.
Experience has shown that the vast majority of the entries in this Index are related to Phoenix-area obituaries. Generally, information about a deceased person from Tucson is when the date of death is prior to 1950, and even that is unusual. Some relevant citations from Tucson-area newspapers are included from the 19th or early 20th centuries. If PCPL doesn't own these older newspapers on microfilm, often the University of Arizona does.
Use This Source:
We recommend only using this Index when there were no results, or incomplete information, from the previous indexes listed above, and when the date of death was prior to 1950. Another possible use would be if the deceased turned out to have died in another area of Arizona besides Pima County, prior to 1987, in which case a citation to another newspaper may be found.

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Arizona Biographical Database
This biographical database refers to persons in the Arizona State Library's collection of books, newspaper articles, periodicals, obituaries, vertical files, school yearbooks, etc. Though this database only mentions the person's name and what materials the person is mentioned in, you can usually find what part of Arizona the person is from and when they lived.
Arizona Daily Star archives (NewsBank)
If the date of death is from 1991 to the present, searching for an obituary becomes much easier. The Arizona Daily Star is available online through the NewsBank database. You must have a valid library card.
In the case of persons who died after 1990, always search this database after searching the Social Security Death Index. If the obituary is in the database, it gives the full text of the obituary or death notice as well the exact date and page number in the microfilm. Some people prefer photocopies of obituaries as they appeared in the newspaper, as opposed to the non-graphic text in the database. The newspaper may include a photograph of the deceased.

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Searching the Arizona Daily Star on Microfilm

With at least a month/year of death to work from, begin a search in the Tucson newspapers (Arizona Daily Star and Tucson Citizen) on microfilm. If you have an exact date of death, we suggest searching each day's paper for seven days after that date. The exception is in the case of a murder, where we suggest searching for fourteen days. It often takes longer for remains to be released to families in those cases. If all you have is a month of death, we suggest searching each day's paper for that month, plus the first seven days of the following month.

The farther back in time, the more difficult the search. We don't have exact dates for the changes in obituary policy and placement, but here are some general ones.

  • From the 1870s until the early 1950s, the Tucson newspapers did not have an Obituaries section. The Tucson Citizen did occasionally have a "Mortuary" section in the early 20th century, but its appearance was very sporadic, making it inconsequential in a search. Deaths simply appeared as news items, scattered throughout the paper. A death notice might appear on page 2 for one individual, and then a different death notice for another person on page 7. This makes searching a whole month very difficult — one needs to scroll through the entire month, scanning each page for possible matches with the name being searched. Fortunately there are some pages which never have death stories: sports, society, comics, editorial.
  • Furthermore, death stories prior to the 1940s were few and far between. It would seem that the papers only printed stories about prominent citizens, and not about everyone. There is less than a 10% success rate with obituary requests dating prior to the 1940s. After that, they steadily increase, until in the 1960s they become an actual section of the paper.
  • Prior to 1917, the Tucson Citizen is generally a better place to look first for a death notice. After that year, the Arizona Daily Star expanded to become a bigger newspaper. In cases where there is an exact date of death, both newspapers are usually searched just to be sure.
  • In the 1950s there is an obituaries section in the newspapers. However, they are in different parts of the paper each day, so it is necessary to look at the table of contents to see where the section is. If there is an exact date of death, the whole paper needs to be scanned, because there are sometimes death stories that are separate from the obituaries section. The Arizona Daily Star Indexes are particularly helpful in the early 1950s, because they list all the deaths, even the obituaries.
  • From the early 1960s through 1993, the Arizona Daily Star decided to always put the obituaries at the beginning of the classified ads. This makes looking through an entire month quicker. Also, through an agreement with the Tucson Citizen in the later 1960s, the obituaries in those two papers are exactly the same, so it is no longer necessary to search both newspapers.
  • From 1994 to 1999, the Arizona Daily Star put obituaries in section A, on the page just prior to the Weather page.
  • From 2000 to 2008, the Arizona Daily Star put obituaries in section B, usually on page 2 of that section.
  • Starting in 2009, the Arizona Daily Star began putting obituaries on the last page of the Tucson & Region section.
  • The Tucson Citizen published its last print newspaper on May 16, 2009.

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Public Records

A Public Record is a brief death notice appearing in the newspaper. It lists name, age, date of death, sometimes occupation, and the funeral home that handled the arrangements. Not every family chooses to pay for an obituary. If we have an exact date of death, search for a Public Record in the absence of an obituary. If only the month of death is known, it is very time-consuming to look for a Public Record because they are on different pages each day, and one would have to consult the table of contents for each day of the month.

Sometimes people aren't sure if the person they are searching for is actually deceased. Check the residential telephone directories and Pima County Assessor's records to see if you can find possible matches for the name.

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Other Sources

Books

Prominent Arizonans are included in an number of books in the Arizona Collection, including Arizona Biographical Dictionary, Arizona's Men of Achievement, Arizona Women's Hall of Fame, and Who's Who in Arizona.

Green Valley News and Sun
Contact the Joyner-Green Valley Branch Library reference staff at 594-5295 for the Green Valley News and Sun, 1967-present.

Chronicling America
Search and view newspaper pages from 1860-1922.

Cemeteries

There four cemeteries in Tucson. They will look up a name in their records with a death date. Their records contain the person's birth and death dates, and burial records. They are:

Tucson Cemetery Association
3015 N. Oracle Road,
520-888-7470

East Lawn Palm Cemetery
5801 E. Grant Road, 85712
520-886-5561

All Faiths Cemeteries
2151 S. Avenida Los Reyes, 85748
520-885-9173

Holy Hope Cemetery
3555 N. Oracle, 85705
520-396-4838

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Quick Chart

Source
Coverage Dates
Includes
U.S. Social Security Death Index 1900 – present, but majority from 1960 – present Indicates birth/death dates, Social Security number, state where S.S. number issued, death residence localities. Does not give obituary date.
Arizona Daily Star Index 1953 – 1989 (1960 – 1989 only lists deaths that are news stories) Indicates date, page and column in which the obituary appeared in the Arizona Daily Star.
Arizona Death Records 1870-1982 Indicates name, birth and death dates as they appear on the tombstone.
Arizona Genealogy Birth and Death Certificates 1855 – 1933 (births)
1844 – 1958 (deaths) 		Includes scanned images of birth and death certificates.
Obituary Daily Times Index of published obituaries in the world.
Arizona Biography/Obituary Index 1865 – 1986 Vast majority of the entries in this Index are Phoenix-area obituaries. Tucson entries are more likely before 1950.
Arizona Biographical Database Arizona State Library collection of books, newspaper articles, periodicals, obituaries, vertical files school yearbooks, etc.
Arizona Daily Star archives (NewsBank) 1991 – present Death notices and text of obituaries. Photos are not available in NewsBank. Check the Arizona Daily Star microfilm for obituaries with photos.
Arizona Daily Star microfilm 1880 – present Death notices and text of obituaries. Photos if published.
Tucson Citizen microfilm 1879 – May 16, 2009 Death notices and text of obituaries. Photos if published.
Public Records Death notices
Other Sources Books, Cemeteries

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If you live outside of Pima County and are not able to visit our library, your local library may be able to provide the assistance you need, possibly through an Interlibrary Loan for microfilm from the Arizona Daily Star or Tucson Citizen, or through an online database. Although the Pima County Public Library does not loan our microfilm, other institutions such as the Arizona State Library and the University of Arizona do.

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