How to Navigate the Scranton Times Obituary Section
Local newspaper obits are one of the most underused resources for genealogy research, but they are also the most confusing to dig through if you do not know the layout. The Scranton Times publishes obituaries both in print and online, and getting reliable information out of them requires knowing where to look and what to expect when the digital record falls apart. The obituary section itself runs daily, with a larger weekend compilation that gathers notices from the previous days. Each entry follows a fairly standard format: full name, age, residence, brief biography, surviving family members, and service details. What most people miss is that the printed version often contains details that do not make it into the online posting. Deadlines cut certain biographical lines, and the web version tends to strip out church names, military unit designations, and cemetery information to save space. I spent three weeks tracking down my great uncle's WWII unit only to find it mentioned in the print obit and completely absent from the digital version. The workaround was straightforward: I went to the Times-Ledger archives on Adams Street and pulled the microfilm for that Saturday's paper. The information was there on page 14, right above the crosswords. There are two main paths to pull records. The first is the PA Times digital subscription at pottstown.com, which has a searchable obituary database going back roughly twenty years. The search function allows you to filter by last name, date range, and location within Lackawanna County. It is accurate but not exhaustive. Misspellings in the original submission get preserved, and if the funeral home submitted the obit with a typo in the birth date, you will not find it without guessing the correction. I ran into this with a third cousin whose obit listed his birth year as 1931 instead of 1932. The search engine returned zero results until I broadened the date range by five years on either side and manually scanned the results.
The second path is the physical archive. The Times-Ledger building on Lackawanna Avenue in Scranton holds paper copies and microfilm dating back to the 1800s. You need to call ahead and schedule a research session. Walk-ins are sometimes accommodated, but the archivist handles other duties and may not be available to assist immediately. Research hours are typically Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM, and the facility does not accept appointments for weekends. There is no charge for basic lookups, but if you need high-resolution scans of multiple pages, there is a per-page fee that runs about fifty cents each. Bring a USB drive if you plan to digitize anything. The scanning equipment is outdated and some formats may not transfer cleanly.
Common Pitfalls and What to Do About Them
Obituaries from the Scranton area have a few regional quirks that trip up researchers. The first is the prevalence of compound surnames and married name variations. Immigrant families in Lackawanna County often used anglicized versions of last names in later generations while keeping the original spelling in older records. A family might have been Kowalski in one generation, Kowalsky in the next, and then just Smith through marriage. When searching, run multiple spelling variants and check the surviving relatives section, which usually lists maiden names for female survivors. A second issue is the gap in coverage during major events. When the Pennsylvania Anthracite Strike disrupted normal publication schedules in historical periods, or when the 1972 flooding from Hurricane Agnes damaged storage facilities, entire months of obituaries went unprinted or were lost. If you are searching for a death between June and September 1972 in the Scranton area, check county coroner records and church burial registers as substitutes. The Diocese of Scranton keeps burial records that overlap with this period and can fill gaps left by missing newspaper issues. A third problem is the difference between the obituary and the death certificate. The obituary is written by family members, often with help from a funeral home, and contains subjective choices about what to include or omit. Dates may be rounded, relationships simplified, and causes of death either stated vaguely or left out entirely. If you need factual dates for a legal matter or formal genealogy proof, the death certificate filed with the Pennsylvania Department of Health is the authoritative source. You can request copies online through the state's Vital Records portal, but processing takes four to six weeks and costs twenty-four dollars per copy. Rush processing is available for an additional fee and cuts that down to about ten business days.
Get the Full Details
What the Online Database Gets Right
The digital archive is useful for quick confirmation when you already have a general idea of when and where someone died. If you know your ancestor died in Luzerne County around 2008 and want to verify a name spelling or get a service location, the online search is fast and usually accurate enough for that purpose. The full-text search also picks up index references that might not appear in a simple name-only query. Searching for "survived by" along with a surname can surface obituaries where the subject's name was misspelled but the family members were listed correctly. The online system also maintains a memorial guestbook feature on newer obituaries. These pages sometimes contain contributions from distant relatives or old friends who include personal details not found in the main text. I once found a niece who lived in Oregon mention a family recipe her aunt taught her in the guestbook comments, and that detail showed up nowhere else in the official obituary. It is worth checking those sections even if the main article looks thin on content.
Limitations That Matter
No system here is perfect. The digital archive does not include every obituary published. Some families choose to publish only in funeral home websites or in ethnic community newspapers that the Times does not index. Polish-language papers like Dziennik Związkowy carried obituaries for Scranton's large Polish-American population that never appeared in the mainstream English editions. If your family has Eastern European roots, check those community publications as well. The Ukrainian Catholic Church in Scranton also maintains its own funeral bulletin archives that cross-reference with secular obituaries. The paywall on the digital archive is another friction point. Full access requires a subscription that runs roughly twelve dollars a month or a hundred and twenty dollars a year. Occasional researchers may find that cost unjustified for a one-time lookup. In those cases, the physical archive visit remains the better option, especially if you can combine it with research at the Lackawanna County Prothonotary office or the Scranton Public Library's local history collection, both of which are free and hold overlapping materials.
Practical Tips for Getting Results
Start with the online search using the broadest reasonable date range, then narrow it down. Do not assume the first result you find is the correct person. Multiple families with the same surname lived in Scranton for over a century, and the search results will mix them together. Verify against the residence address and the listed survivors before recording anything. Cross-reference the obituary date with the Social Security Death Index to confirm the death occurred within a reasonable window. Obituaries are typically published one to three days after death, so a search result showing a death date several months before the obituary publication date likely belongs to a different person with the same name. When you find a record you want to preserve, screenshot or print the full page including the publication date and page number. Digital links rot. The Times has changed its website platform multiple times over the years, and old URLs frequently return 404 errors. Having a local copy with the bibliographic details ensures you can trace the source later if needed. If you are doing serious research, build a spreadsheet tracking each obituary you encounter. Include the full name as printed, any alternate names or spellings, the date of publication, the page number, the URL if it exists, and the location of the physical microfilm if you consulted that route. This tracking becomes essential when you realize six months later that a sister mentioned in passing in one obituary has her own separate record you have not found yet.
