Obituaries

Another good source of family information, particularly from the mid to late 20th century, is an obituary from the newspaper. Many obits include date of birth, date of death, name of parents, spouse, children and siblings and place of burial. There aren't obituaries for all deaths, and sometimes they contain little useful information, but it's always worth taking a look. The Penobscot Times papers are available at the Old Town Library and on microfilm at the University of Maine - Fogler Library. Fogler also has microfilm of the Bangor Daily News and other Maine newspapers. Historical societies and libraries are beginning to transcribe or scan obituaries into computer databases, so you may have some luck doing an online search, but so far, a very small percentage of this work has been completed, so if you have access to the papers for the town or city where your ancestor died, and have a death date, going to the source is your best bet. If you don't know a death date or place then you will want to look at one of the available indexes mentioned above. Abbott Memorial Library in Dexter has created an Obituary database that currently includes obits from 1944 to present. The Maine Newspaper Project at the Maine State Archives is a list of Maine Newspapers that indicates date of publication and holdings at various libraries and archives.