How to Navigate the Deseret News Obituary Archive Effectively
The Deseret News has maintained one of the more thorough obituary collections in the western United States, and if you are researching Utah family history or studying prominent figures from the region, it will save you considerable time compared to digging through county records. I have spent hundreds of hours pulling records from this archive, and the interface has improved somewhat over the years, but it still has quirks that trip up anyone who has not learned them by trial and error. Start by going directly to the obituary search page on the Deseret News website. Do not waste time browsing the homepage. The search function is buried under their genealogy and local history sections. You will want to use the advanced search rather than the basic one. The basic search misses too many results because it does not account for variations in how names were indexed, especially for women who married and changed surnames, or for older records where spelling was inconsistent. When I first started using this archive, I spent an entire afternoon trying to locate the obituary of my great-great-grandfather, who died in 1947 in Salt Lake County. The name appeared as "Jensen" in some records and "Jenson" in others. The database indexed it under one spelling and missed it under the other. My workaround was to search by date range alone, covering the two weeks after his death, then manually scanning the results. This took about forty-five minutes instead of five, but it is faster than refreshing the page hoping the spelling would align.
The archive covers obituaries going back to the early twentieth century, though coverage becomes significantly spottier before 1930. Some years in the late 1800s and very early 1900s have near-complete coverage for Salt Lake City and surrounding areas, but rural counties like San Juan and Daggett are unreliable before World War II. I learned this the hard way when I assumed a complete gap meant the person never died in Utah rather than realizing the paper simply did not carry obituaries from that county at that time. For notable Utah figures, the archive is especially useful because Deseret News obituaries tend to be longer and more detailed than those in smaller papers. A typical obituary for a prominent resident from the 1960s through the 1990s will include birth place, education, military service, employment history, church affiliation, surviving family members, and often a list of predeceased relatives. That level of detail is not standard everywhere. I have pulled obituaries that included exact addresses, which proved critical when two families in my research shared the same surname and I needed to distinguish between them. One thing beginners consistently miss is that the archive includes death notices alongside full obituaries. Death notices are shorter, sometimes just a sentence or two, but they contain the same core information: name, date of death, funeral arrangements, and surviving family. When a full obituary is absent for someone you are researching, the death notice is your next best option. The database indexes both together, so a search will return whichever type exists for that person. I once found a death notice for a woman who had no full obituary, and it listed her maiden name, which solved a branching mystery in my tree that had been open for three years.
The download or export function is limited. You cannot pull bulk records in a single operation. Each obituary page allows you to print or save as PDF, but there is no batch export. If you are compiling a research project and need to save fifty obituaries, plan for roughly an hour of manual work. I developed a habit of opening each result in a new tab while I searched, then saving them all in one sitting. It keeps your place in the search results while you build your folder. Another limitation you should know about: the search does not handle phonetic variations well. Names like "Thorsson" and "Thordson" are treated as distinct. If you are researching Icelandic or Scandinavian surnames, which is common in Utah, you need to run multiple searches with each spelling variant. I keep a running list of common Utah surname variations and run each one separately before moving to the next person. This doubles your search time but catches records that would otherwise be invisible. The archive also has a gap around certain historical periods. During World War II, obituary publication continued but some smaller papers that fed content to the Deseret News system were consolidated, and coverage from those outlets dropped off temporarily. If someone died in a smaller community like Price or Vernal and you cannot find a record, check the Deseret News index for nearby major cities as well. Family members sometimes arranged for the obituary to run in Salt Lake City instead of the local paper.
Get the Full Details
For the most part, the archive is freely accessible, though some older scanned images may require a subscription to the Deseret News digital archives or a Genealogy Bank subscription that includes the collection. Make sure you know which platform you are accessing before you start. The free version shows indexes and brief summaries. The full text of older obituaries often sits behind a paywall on third-party genealogy sites that have licensing agreements with the Deseret News. I recommend checking FamilySearch first, since they sometimes have indexed portions of the collection at no cost, and then cross-referencing with the Deseret News site directly. The interface does not support complex Boolean operators, so you cannot search for "Smith AND died 1952 AND Utah" in a single query. You are limited to basic keyword searches and date filters. This is frustrating but manageable if you break your searches down into narrower components. Search by last name and year of death first. Then refine by given name or location if the results are too broad. I also want to mention that some obituaries in the archive are microfilm copies rather than original newspaper scans. The image quality varies, and OCR can misread certain characters, particularly old-fashioned typefaces. If a search returns a result but the text looks garbled or incomplete, try viewing the original image if the platform provides that option. I have caught several misreads this way, including one where "born" was read as "borne" and threw off my date calculations entirely.
If you are doing serious research, keep a spreadsheet. Record the name, date of death, date of obituary publication, URL or archive reference number, and any notes about spelling variations or discrepancies. You will thank yourself later when you need to verify something and cannot remember which search string pulled up the record. I have been maintaining this habit for over a decade and it has prevented multiple errors in published family histories. The archive is not perfect, and it will not replace vital records offices or census data, but for anyone studying Utah social history, religious community patterns, or notable regional figures, it remains one of the most accessible and detailed single sources available. Just budget extra time for the quirks and learn the workarounds before you get frustrated and walk away.
