Mourn Not! A History of Obituaries in American Newspapers

The following is a guest post by Elizabeth Davidson, a Reference Librarian in the Serial and Government Publications Division. 

Obituaries as we know them today are rich records of a person’s life. They might include the full name of the deceased, their predeceased and surviving family members, details of their accomplishments, or information about their funerary service or interment. What may come as a surprise to many is that this information-rich article is a very recent evolution in the long history of information sharing about a person’s death.

The earliest form of the obituary is the death notice, a short announcement of someone’s passing rather than a description and celebration of their life, and its history can be tracked as far back as the 59 BC Roman daily gazette, the “Acta Diurna,” where the deaths (among other official events of the day) of prominent citizens and politicians would be hand carved on metal or stone and publicly posted for review. Over a millennium later, the invention of the Gutenberg Press made it both easier and more common to share death notices in printed newspapers, but by the time colonial American newspapers were being printed the privilege was still reserved for notable individuals – those with wealth, fame, or of local or political importance at their time of death.

Even members of the public who were once famous but had faded from the public eye by the time of their deaths were unlikely to merit more than a line in the paper, if there was any mention at all! Gouverneur Morris, one of America’s Founding Fathers and known today as the author of the Preamble of the Constitution, warranted only a single line of acknowledgement in the New Hampshire Gazette after his death in a list of those who had passed away in the previous week: “[Died:] In Morrisania, N.Y. the Hon. Gouverneur Morris, aged 65.”

Meanwhile, the death of Stephen Heard, a president of the state of Georgia (the position that we now know as ‘governor’), lifelong friend of George Washington, a Revolutionary War soldier, and the namesake of Heard County, Georgia, was recorded only in family records without any known obituaries or death notices published after his passing or interment when he died of old age.

Death notices for local ‘curiosities’ were sometimes recorded, whether it was the passing of the oldest citizen in the area or a death under a strange circumstance. These events were considered ‘news’ because they were of interest to the newspaper’s readers and the local citizenry at large.

In the world we live in today where much of our news, both personal and public, is conveyed in text, it’s hard to conceptualize that most deaths weren’t recorded publicly. But in a time when people lived their lives centered around the gathering points related to their houses of worship, businesses and families, the deaths of members of the community were communicated via word of mouth. Deaths were recorded in mortality schedules, family records or family Bibles, church or temple records, or probate and will records rather than in local or state newspapers.

Newspapers charged a fee to print a death notice or obituary if the paper had not elected to publish the death as a newsworthy event, compounding the weight of publication for families who might need to conserve their savings. This increased the imbalance of the type of individuals whose deaths we see reflected in historic newspapers. Death notices of men were more likely to be published than of women, white citizen’s deaths were more likely to be published than of any other group, and the wealthy were able to afford to pay to have their death notice or obituary published if a newspaper was not already planning to print it, strongly slanting the obituaries and death notices of this time toward specific groups of people.

Almost all obituaries published before the 1880s were short in length due to the necessity of setting type in the Gutenberg press by hand; the obituaries of infants and children might have included poetry or verse, while the obituaries of adults often celebrated their moral and social values.

Exceptions to the classism in 18^th and early 19^th century American death notices can be found in events of mass casualties such as shipwrecks, where lists of the dead were published without consideration to individual wealth or personal importance. Not only were disasters a source of public interest and therefore ‘newsworthy,’ there was no other central community source of information to inform friends and family of the loss of their loved ones.

In years leading to the Civil War, steam-powered printing made newspapers more affordable, leading to the creation of penny-press papers and making newspapers accessible to working class Americans. This in turn resulted in expanded publication of obituaries of ordinary citizens thanks to the new consumer base and increased customer interest.

The arrival of the Civil War then brought a change to the way Americans grappled with death, with the number of casualties on the battlefield and in prison camps resulting in the need for mass burials in unheard of numbers for American citizens, denying many families the closure of knowing what happened to their missing loved ones. Newspaper reporters described action from the front lines of battle, making newspapers a vital source of information for civilians hungry for information about current events and the situations and status of the family members who left their homes to serve in the war.

Newspapers altered the ways in which they reported deaths and casualties, with some papers publishing extended lists of names of dead, with status reports of the wounded and missing after battles or when reports came from prison camps. This was a challenge at the best of times, but even more so in an era of mass fatalities when soldiers were not provided standardized dog tags but were instead responsible for acquiring or creating their own.

While these long lists of names – the death notices of their time – became profoundly necessary resources for families to keep track of the status of their relatives and friends, obituaries published during and immediately after the Civil War were marked by sentimentality and religious references expressing the grief of those left behind in death. Often the focus was on the manner of the death of the departed and reflected the shock experienced by civilians during and following the tumult of the war.

In the years following the war and as the country entered its period of reconstruction, published obituaries transitioned away from focusing on death and sorrow and toward celebrating the lifetime accomplishments of the deceased, though many obituaries made mention of service in the military. The newspapers of the newly unified and rapidly industrializing country also saw an increase in the number of obituaries published for women and Black citizens, though upper- and middle-class white men continued to be the main feature of most death notices and obituaries. During this era, obituaries often listed the jobs, clubs, and organizations in which the deceased took part in addition to their date of demise and their moral character.

The invention of the linotype in 1880 brought another explosive change to the world of newspaper publishing. The speed and ease with which papers could be formatted and printed after its introduction allowed publishers to expand beyond the traditional four-page newspaper length and incorporate more news, more stories, more advertisements, and ultimately, more obituaries per issue. This in turn expanded the space for more obituaries of the ‘common man’ – and woman!

This obituary displays an interesting and linotype-specific error, where a slug – or line of text – is out of place in the article. The line “Three years after the demise of her” belongs above the last paragraph in the sample but was missed in the editor’s last proof and made it into the final print, providing us with a glimpse into the wonders of newspaper production at the time.

As newspapers moved into the 20^th century, obituaries – and Americans’ approach to them – continued to grow and shift toward the personal remembrances we recognize today. Newspapers from the 1930-1940s display obituaries in what has become the traditional four-part format: announcement of death, biography, familial information of those who survived and/or predeceased the departed, and announcement of funeral services.

Today, obituaries are still published in newspapers across the nation, with many newspaper websites dedicating a section specifically to curating their current and archival obituaries. There are even books of compilations celebrating the ‘best of’ newspaper obituaries published over time.

Bereaved family members and friends today may opt to publish obituaries through online platforms in addition to, or as an alternative to their local or national newspaper. The digital realm provides mourners with the ability to provide a longer description of the deceased’s life, as well as an interactive platform for the bereaved to leave comments and memories. Obituaries continue to evolve with America’s social and technological environment and provide us with insight into the way we honor our departed.

Additional Resources:

Hume, J. (2000). Obituaries in American culture. University Press of Mississippi.