How to Find and Preserve Rochester Democrat and Chronicle Obituaries
The Democrat and Chronicle has been publishing obituaries in Rochester since the late 1800s. If you are trying to research family history or track down a specific notice, the process is not as simple as searching a single database. I spent several weekends in 2019 trying to locate an obituary for my great-uncle who died in 1987. The digital archive only goes back to roughly 2012, which left me stranded for thirty-two years of coverage. There are three main sources for these records, and each has different coverage gaps. The microfilm collection at the Rochester Public Library main branch holds papers from 1818 through 2011. You need a library card and access to the local history room, which operates Tuesday through Saturday from nine to five. The microfilm readers there are the old drum-scanner type, not the flatbed models. They work fine for articles but struggle with folded pages near the spine of the newspaper. I learned this the hard way when trying to read an obituary that was printed on the inside fold of the May 14, 1995 edition. The text was distorted and I almost gave up until I asked a librarian for the bound volume instead. The library keeps hardcover annual index volumes that go back to 1930, which is actually more useful than the microfilm for quick lookups. The second option is the Democat and Chronicle's own website at democratandchronicle.com. Their archive starts around 2012 and includes full obituary texts with photos. The search function works reasonably well if you know the approximate date of death. You can filter by name, date range, and keyword. The problem is that obituaries published between 2012 and 2016 sometimes have missing images or truncated text due to a CMS migration that happened in early 2017. About twelve percent of notices from that period have incomplete data. If you are researching someone who died in that window, you should cross-reference with the newspaper's own print archives at the library.
The third source is the Livingston County Historical Society, which holds some early twentieth-century collections that overlap with the D and C coverage. Their materials are not digitized, so you have to visit in person. The society is located in Goodells Hall on South Avenue. They accept research requests by mail, but response time is typically three to four weeks. For urgent projects, calling ahead and scheduling a two-hour session saves significant time compared to waiting for mail correspondence. I found that the most efficient workflow combines these sources in a specific order. Start with the online archive if the death occurred after 2012. Use the date range filter with a three-day window around the known death date, not the exact date, because some obituaries were published one or two days after the actual death. Then move to the library microfilm or bound volumes for pre-2012 notices. The library staff can pull the specific reels or volumes in about ten minutes if you provide the exact date and page number from their index. Finally, check the historical society collection if you are researching families with connections to surrounding counties like Monroe, Ontario, or Wayne. One thing nobody mentions is the naming conventions used in older obituaries. Before 1950, many notices referred to deceased individuals by their full names including middle names or initials, but the library catalog and online search indexes sometimes truncate these to just first and last names. I wasted two hours in 2020 searching for "Robert Smith" when the actual obituary was filed under "Robert J. Smith." The workaround is to search both variations and use wildcard searches if the database supports them. The D and C's current website allows asterisk wildcards, but the microfilm index does not.
Preserving these obituaries for future research requires digitization, but the process has limitations. Scanning microfilm at the library costs about fifty cents per page, and a typical obituary section runs four to six pages. A full year of obituaries from the 1980s totals approximately two thousand pages, which means digitizing a single year runs roughly one hundred dollars in scanning fees alone. The library offers a free digitization service for researchers who qualify as genealogical society members, but processing takes six to eight weeks. If you need faster turnaround, purchasing a personal microfilm reader for home use costs around two hundred dollars and eliminates the wait time entirely. The physical condition of older newspapers affects digitization quality significantly. Papers from before 1920 were printed on acidic newsprint that turns brown and becomes brittle over time. I encountered an obituary from 1903 that was illegible on microfilm due to ink degradation, but the bound volume at the library had better preservation because it was stored in climate-controlled conditions. When scanning or photographing these materials yourself, use a lightbox with even illumination rather than direct flash photography, which creates hot spots and washes out text. A DSLR camera with a macro lens at f/8 aperture produces the best results for individual pages. Another practical consideration is the difference between death notices and obituaries. The D and C published both formats, but they serve different purposes. Death notices are brief, standardized announcements that include basic facts like date of death, surviving family members, and funeral arrangements. Obituaries are longer, narrative pieces written by family members or newspaper staff that provide biographical details and personal anecdotes. The death notices started appearing regularly in the 1890s, while full obituaries became common practice only after World War II. Researchers looking for detailed life information should focus on obituaries, but those tracking genealogical data often find death notices more useful because they list surviving relatives systematically.
Get the Full Details
The Rochester area has several cemetery records that complement the newspaper obituaries. The Find a Grave database contains approximately forty thousand headstone photos for Monroe County cemeteries, but the information is user-submitted and contains errors. I cross-referenced an obituary with Find a Grave data in 2021 and found that the burial date listed on the website was incorrect by three weeks. The actual interment occurred on a different date than what was recorded online. Always verify cemetery information against primary sources like the newspaper or funeral home records rather than relying on crowdsourced databases. If you are conducting serious research on Rochester obituaries, budget approximately fifteen hours per family line for thorough coverage spanning fifty years. This includes time spent visiting the library, searching online archives, reviewing bound volumes, and cross-referencing multiple sources. The process can be completed in half that time if you focus on a single decade or work with a researcher who already knows the collection layout. The key is starting with the most accessible sources and moving to specialized archives only when necessary.
