How to Navigate and Find What You Need in Local PA Obituary Archives
The Sharon Herald publishes obituaries for the Mercer County area of Pennsylvania, and finding specific records isn't always as straightforward as typing a name into Google. I spent too many hours digging through dead links and paywalled pages before I figured out a system that actually works. Here is how you approach it without losing your patience. The official archive sits behind the Sharon Herald website, typically under a section labeled "Obituaries" or "Celebrating Lives and Legacy." The problem most people run into is that the site reorganized its layout a few years back, and old URLs got redirected or dropped entirely. The current working approach is to go to the main domain and use their internal search bar with the format: full name plus the word "obit" or the year of death. That filters out the news articles and gets you closer to what you need. One thing the site doesn't make obvious: obituaries that are more than three years old often get moved to a separate archived section that requires a different browsing path. I learned this the hard way when trying to find a record from 2019. The link from Google landed on a 404 page. The workaround was to navigate to the obituaries main page, then filter by month and year using the calendar widget on the left sidebar. It is buried but functional. If that fails, Wayback Machine has cached versions of the Sharon Herald obituary pages going back to around 2016. It is not perfect but it salvages content that would otherwise be inaccessible.
The content itself follows a standard format. You will typically find the full name, age, date of death, a brief biographical sketch, surviving family members, and service information. Some entries include a photo. The ones tagged "Celebrating Lives and Legacy" tend to be longer, often several paragraphs, and sometimes include details about the person's career, military service, or community involvement. Shorter notices are usually just a few lines and may lack the same depth. Here is a practical tip most people miss: if you are looking for a specific obituary and the search isn't turning it up, try searching just the surname with the publication name "Sharon Herald." Sometimes the first name gets misspelled in the original submission, or the deceased went by a middle name rather than the legal first name on file. I had this happen with an uncle's record where the family submitted "Robert" but the listing showed "Bob." A pure surname search caught it immediately.
Working with the Archives When Records Go Missing
The biggest frustration with any local newspaper archive is gaps. The Sharon Herald is a smaller community paper, and digitization has been inconsistent over the years. Pre-2015 obituaries may only exist in print. If you need something from that era, you have two realistic options. The first is contacting the Sharon Herald office directly at (724) 342-8400. They keep physical copies and sometimes have staff who can pull a microfilm or archived page for you. It is not instant but it works. The second option is the Mercer County Library System in Sharpstown. They hold local genealogical files and may have clippings that predate the digital archive. Another edge case worth noting: if the obituary was placed through a funeral home rather than submitted directly by family, the listing might appear under the funeral home's name rather than the deceased's. I ran into this when researching a neighbor's father. The obituary was listed under "Bomberger Funeral Home" because they handled the placement. Searching by funeral home name rather than personal name was the only way to locate it. This is not common knowledge and the website does not advertise it, but it saved me hours of fruitless searching. If you are compiling these records for genealogical research, copy the full text and the publication date immediately. These pages do change, and content gets updated or removed without notice. I have watched three separate obituaries get edited on the live site within a single week, usually when families corrected service times or added surviving relatives. The archived versions you save locally are the only ones you can trust staying consistent.
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Alternatives When the Herald Archive Falls Short
When the Sharon Herald page is unhelpful or the record is missing, PA obituary databases like Legacy.com sometimes carry cross-posted versions, though they are not reliable for complete coverage. The GenWeb Project for Mercer County also maintains some historical records that predate the digital newspaper archive. It is not exhaustive, but it fills certain gaps that commercial sites overlook entirely.
