San Francisco, California, Historical Obituaries in Newspapers (1847 - 2017)

How to Search San Francisco, California Obituary Archives

How do you begin searching through our vast San Francisco obituary archives?

The easiest way to perform a basic San Francisco obituary search is to enter the last name of your relative and press the “Search” button. You’ll gain access to thousands of California newspaper obituaries in seconds.

However, if you have a common last name or want to discover someone specific, you need to go deeper than this by using advanced search techniques. Follow these steps to begin narrowing down your results:

• Step One - Enter known first, middle, and last names of your relative to increase accuracy. This will ensure close match San Francisco, California obituaries are more likely to pertain to the right person.
• Step Two - Add in keywords using the information you already know about your relative. For example, if you know which town or neighborhood they resided in, include these keywords. Alternatively, try looking into US Census Records.
• Step Three - Likewise, you can exclude certain keywords to filter out irrelevant results. Maybe you know they didn’t live in a specific town or go to a specific school? Include these keywords as exclusions.
• Step Four - Even if you don’t know the year they died, you can include a year range. Our search feature will include all results relevant to a specific period, check out marriage records and birth records to hone in your research.
• Step Five - Change the sorting options to find different obituaries. You can order results by newest, oldest, and best match.

Tips for a Successful San Francisco Obituary Search

Accurate record keeping has always been a major problem for modern family historians. When tracking down your ancestors, you need to be aware that mistakes were common. Many records were taken orally and so may have been noted down incorrectly.

Older San Francisco, California local newspaper obituaries typically contained valuable pieces of family history. These snippets of information can confirm whether an ancestor belonged to your family and may also serve as foundations for additional research into your extended family.

When searching San Francisco obits, here are our top tips for uncovering your family history:

• Work backward. Use more recent known ancestors to uncover older ones.
• Search for ancestors by their initials. Older obituaries may not have listed your ancestor’s full name.
• When looking for a female relative, search by their husband’s name.
• Search by common misspellings. Information may not have been noted down correctly.
• When looking through the San Francisco obituary archives, double-check information by using any official government records you have.

These research strategies can help you dig deeper and overcome those frustrating dead ends. Using these search techniques can also help you fact-check your findings to ensure you have the right person.