Update on St. Louis Post Dispatch Obituaries

The below information is outdated.
Please follow this link for more recent info.

A month ago I wrote about the St. Louis City Public Library's database and index of the St. Louis Post Dispatch Obituaries they (and the St. Louis County library) have on microfilm. The staff is hard at work updating their site, as there have been changes in the past month.

Their database now covers 1880-1930, 1942-1945, 1960-1963, and 1992-2001.

In addition to adding 1998-2001 data, they have added an Obituaries by Year index covering the same years. This is on their new website and successfully replaces the index on their old website. For the moment, the old website is the only place to go for the 2002-2006 obituary index, but I expect that to change relatively quickly considering their pace in updating the new site in the past couple months. The old index page also has the World War 1 and World War 2 casualty, MIA and POW lists. At some point I expect those to be transferred to the new website as well.

A month ago I said that the newer indexes weren't as important since the Post Dispatch's archive goes back to 1988, but as I discovered a couple days ago, the Post Dispatch's archive is incomplete.

As I mentioned last month, once you find a particular obituary listing you are seeking, if you do live in St. Louis, you can find the obituary in the microfilm archives at either the St. Louis County or St. Louis City headquarter libraries.

You can also request the County library photocopy and mail it to you. The fee is minimal.

For post-1988 obituaries, if you have a subscription, you can also search on GenealogyBank, NewsBank, or any other source for America's Obituaries' database - and see if the obituary is there. It might save you a library trip.