Getting At Boston Globe Obituaries Without Losing Your Mind
The Boston Globe obituaries are one of those resources that seem simple on the surface but quickly reveal friction as soon as you start digging. I spent years pulling these for genealogy research and family history projects, and the process is nowhere near as straightforward as typing a name into a search box. The newspaper has been publishing obituaries since 1872, which means the archive stretches back further than most people realize. But accessing it smoothly requires knowing a few things that the website does not advertise clearly. Let me start with something most people get wrong on their first attempt. The Globe obituary search page does not index every obituary published. The digital archive has gaps, particularly for issues before 2000 and for any obituaries that ran in the Sunday magazine or the Magazine section rather than the main newspaper. I spent three weeks hunting for an obituary from 1998 that I knew had appeared in the Boston area, only to discover it was a full-page layout piece that had been filed under a different section entirely. The workaround was pulling the microfilm catalog record for that specific date and cross-referencing it manually. Takes about twenty minutes per issue if you know the system. The primary entry point is globe.com/obituaries. You can search by name, and the results will show the published date, the full obituary text, and sometimes a photo. The search accepts first name alone, last name alone, or both. A full name search filters more aggressively and cuts out a lot of the noise from common names like John Smith or Mary Johnson. The problem is the search algorithm treats apostrophes and hyphens inconsistently. I have found that searching for O'Brien as Obrien recovers roughly half the results that the correct spelling produces. My workflow is to run both searches and merge the results manually.
There is a paywall now for the full text of most obituaries published after 2013. The headline and a short excerpt show up for free, but the complete necrology with surviving family details and service information sits behind the subscription wall. This is not unique to the Globe, but it is worth understanding the scope because it affects your research strategy significantly. Local public libraries in the Greater Boston area offer free access to the Globe archive through their research databases. I would not rely on the digital library card system for this, though. The library portal sometimes redirects to a different platform that does not carry the full obituary database. Going to the library and using their terminal on site is more reliable, and it usually takes under five minutes to pull a complete obituary. For older material, the Globe's partnership with Legacy.com changed the archive landscape. Certain backfile obituaries were migrated to the Legacy platform, and some of those pages no longer redirect correctly to the Globe domain. If you encounter a URL that loads a generic Legacy template without the actual obituary text, the article has likely been orphaned during a migration. The fix is to search the date range manually on the Globe site instead of following a broken link. This happens frequently with obituaries from the 2010 to 2015 window. One thing that catches people off guard is that the Globe does not publish an obituary for every death that occurs in its circulation area. The obituaries represent a self-selected subset, mostly driven by families who commission them. Many deaths go unmarked in the paper entirely, especially in the earlier decades when funeral homes had less incentive to place notices and the cost per line was higher. If you are doing serious research, you cannot treat the Globe obituary archive as a complete record. It is a useful supplement to the Massachusetts vital records, but it is not a replacement. The state's online vital records search has its own restrictions, but for deaths before 1960 the municipal clerk's office still holds paper certificates that contain details the newspaper obituaries never include, like exact time of death and attending physician.
The photo archives are another underused feature. Some obituaries include a portrait or a family photograph that the main search result does not display prominently. When you open the full article, there is usually a photo gallery section at the bottom. I have found burial plot information and even casual snapshots from vacations in those galleries that provide context a text-only record never will. The resolution is low enough that you cannot do much with them for publication purposes, but they are fine for personal research files. Here is a practical workflow that I recommend. First, search the Globe by full name with the date range narrowed to the decade of death. Pull every result that matches, even borderline ones. Second, check the same search on Legacy.com in case the article migrated. Third, note the exact publication date and then pull the corresponding issue from any available library database to verify whether the obituary appeared in the main section or a supplement. This third step catches about a fifth of cases where the digital archive categorizes the entry incorrectly. If you need bulk access or are working on a project involving hundreds of records, the Globe does not offer a bulk data API for obituaries. The only legal way to pull large volumes is through a custom research arrangement with the newspaper's archive department. I have seen researchers attempt to scrape the search results, and the site blocks IP addresses after roughly fifty requests within a short window. That approach does not work long term and will get you locked out for an extended period.
Get the Full Details
The obituary section itself has evolved over the past decade in ways that affect searchability. In the mid-2010s the Globe began using a templated format for standard obituaries, which means structured fields for survivors, predeceased relatives, and service details. Modern obituaries follow this structure almost consistently, making automated extraction feasible if you are doing computational analysis. Earlier obituaries are freeform prose written by family members or funeral directors, which varies widely in style and completeness. If you are building a dataset, you will need separate handling rules for pre-2015 versus post-2015 entries. Another detail that matters more than it should: the Globe assigns internal classification codes to obituaries that sometimes differ from how they appear in search results. An obituary listed under one surname in the digital index may actually belong to a spouse who died earlier and was merged into the current entry during an update. This happens most often with widowed individuals whose remarried surnames do not match the original record. Cross-checking the surviving family list in the body of the obituary resolves these mismatches without much effort. The archive retains some obituaries that have been taken down from the live site. These are typically removed due to factual disputes raised by family members after publication. The archived version may still be accessible through the library database or a cached copy on the Wayback Machine, but neither source guarantees completeness. I have encountered cases where the live page shows a redacted text with placeholder brackets, and the archived version from a few days earlier contains the full original. This matters if you are citing the obituary in academic or legal work, since the version you use affects the factual record.
For people working with Boston-area Italian, Irish, or Portuguese communities, the obituary section deserves extra attention. These populations historically placed larger, more detailed obituaries than the regional average, and the Globe ran them extensively through the mid-twentieth century. The detailed extended family lists in those notices can fill gaps that civil records leave open, particularly around maternal lineages that were not always captured in vital statistics documents. The cost side is straightforward but worth stating plainly. A Globe digital subscription runs approximately twelve dollars per month. Library access is free if your local branch carries it. Individual obituary purchases through the website are not offered at a per-article rate anymore, so the subscription or library route are your only options unless you find a cached free copy elsewhere. I have stopped recommending the Globe obituary archive as a first stop for anyone researching a death. The Massachusetts State Archives and municipal clerk records should be checked first because they are complete and not paywalled. The Globe obituaries work best as a secondary source that adds narrative detail, family relationships, and community context to the bare facts you get from official records. Used in that order, the process is efficient. Used in reverse, it is mostly frustrating.
Quick Reference for Common Problems
Name not returning results: Try removing the apostrophe, trying the married name instead of the birth name, and expanding the date range by five years on each side. The search index occasionally misfiles dates by a day or two around holidays and weekends when staffing was lighter. Paywall blocking full text: Use a public library terminal. If your library does not have access, the Boston Public Library offers remote database access to residents with a valid BPL card, and non-residents can visit in person. Article found but text is missing: Check Legacy.com with the same search parameters. The migration left some articles stranded on third-party hosting with broken linking.
Need images from the obituary: Open the full article page and scroll to the photo gallery at the bottom. Screen capture if necessary, since the resolution is too low for professional reproduction regardless. Building a large dataset: Do not attempt to scrape. Contact the Globe archive department directly for a custom research request, and budget significantly more time than you expect. Their response time averages two to four weeks for initial contact.
