Reading and Writing Obituaries Through SLtrib
SLtrib obituaries are the Salt Lake Tribune's memorial section, published daily online and sometimes in the print edition. They function as both genealogical records and public notices. If you are looking at them for research or for a loved one, they follow a fairly standard structure, but there are enough small details that trip people up. I have spent more weekends than I want to admit digging through SLtrib archives. The site puts the search bar at the top. Type a last name, pick a date range, and hit enter. Most people stop there. Here is what actually works. Prioritize the advanced search if you are hunting for someone born in the 1920s or earlier. The regular box often returns noise from living residents who happen to share the same name. Use the filter for "Obituary" only, not "Death Notices," because they are not the same thing. Death notices are paid ads. Obituaries are editorially written pieces, usually longer and richer in detail.
When I searched for my grandfather's obituary back in 2019, the index listed him under "Gronski, Jan" but the actual article used his middle initial. I found it by searching the death date directly instead of relying on the name field. That cut the results from forty down to three.
The Legacy Lives On Remembering Life Loss And Literacy Through Sltrib Obituaries
This phrase shows up occasionally in commentary pieces attached to obituaries or in special memorial features. It is not a headline you will find on every page. The Tribune uses it when doing longer reflective essays about community loss, literacy programs in memoriam, or anniversary features. If you see it, it usually means the piece goes beyond a standard death notice and includes biographical depth or a broader cultural observation. A standard obituary typically includes the full name, age, city of residence, date of death, surviving family members, predeceased relatives, service details, and a brief biography paragraph. Some include a photo. The photo is often the most useful part for genealogy because it gives you a visual reference for the time period. The survival list is what most researchers focus on. It lists children, grandchildren, siblings, and sometimes nieces or nephews. I have found sibling names that never appeared in census records simply because they were listed as surviving in an obituary from 1987. Those names led me to cemetery records and Social Security death indexes that filled gaps in my family tree.
Get the Full Details
Common Mistakes People Make
The biggest issue is assuming the death date in the obit matches the actual date of death. It does not always. The obit may mention the person died "after a brief illness" or give a date that is off by a day or two. I once spent an hour cross-referencing before realizing the funeral home had listed the wrong date on the submission form. Always verify against the Utah death certificate if you need precision. Another mistake is not checking the archive depth. SLtrib keeps obituaries going back to the mid-1990s online. Earlier records exist but require a physical visit to the Newspaper Archive or an interlibrary loan request. I learned this the hard way when trying to track down a great-aunt who died in 1993. The online search returned nothing. A friend at the library pulled the microfilm for me and found it within ten minutes.
Submitting An Obituary Yourself
If you need to place an obituary, SLtrib charges by the line or by the word count depending on the format. As of the last time I checked, the basic death notice runs around one hundred fifty dollars for a standard length. A full obituary with biography and photo can run two to three hundred dollars. Prices change, so verify on their current rates page before submitting. The submission process is online. You fill out a form, upload a photo if you have one, and choose your publication date. They typically run obituaries within one to three business days. I recommend submitting at least forty-eight hours before the service if you want it published before the funeral. Rush submissions are sometimes available but cost extra. Be precise with the family names. I have seen multiple obituaries corrected after publication because a spouse's maiden name was mixed up with a current surname. The correction runs the next day and costs additional fees. Double-check everything before you hit submit.
Using Obituaries For Genealogy Research
Obituaries are one of the most underutilized resources in family history research. They contain information that other records do not, especially informal relationships and migration patterns. A standard census record will tell you who lived in a house. An obituary tells you who that person was connected to across the country. When I was researching my mother's side of the family, I found a set of brothers who moved from Poland through Chicago before settling in Utah. The census showed the brothers in separate households in 1940. Their father's obituary in SLtrib listed all three sons and their cities of residence. That single document gave me the migration chain I needed to order immigration records from Ellis Island. Another useful detail is the cause of death when it is included. SLtrib obituaries sometimes mention illness or accident. This is not the official cause but it can point you toward medical records or coroner reports. I found a lung condition mentioned in my great-grandfather's obit that led me to occupational health records from the mine where he worked.
Limitations You Should Know
SLtrib obituaries cover the Salt Lake City area and surrounding counties. If your ancestor lived in rural Utah outside the Tribune's circulation zone, they may have been published elsewhere. The Deseret News in Salt Lake City also publishes obituaries, and local papers in Provo, Ogden, and St. George have their own sections. Do not assume SLtrib has everything. The online archive has gaps. Some years from the late nineties are incomplete due to digitization errors. I encountered this when researching a death from 1998. The database showed a blank entry for the date. I requested the physical paper through the Utah State History library and found the obituary was there, just never scanned properly. This happens more often than you would think. Privacy settings also affect what you can see. Recent obituaries may be restricted if the family chooses to limit access. I ran into this with a living relative's partner. The obituary was published but the online version required authentication through a family member's account. The print version was available at the library without issue.
Practical Tips For Efficient Searching
Use wildcard searches for misspelled names. The database sometimes contains typos from the original submission. Adding an asterisk after the first few letters of a last name can recover results that a strict match misses. Save your searches. SLtrib allows you to create a free account and save search queries. This is useful if you are tracking a family line over months. I set up alerts for two different surnames and got weekly emails with new matches. Most of the matches were dead ends, but one led to a cousin I had not known about. Export the data. When you find a relevant obituary, copy the text immediately. The site does not always keep old articles accessible indefinitely. I lost three obituaries to link rot before I started archiving them locally. A simple text file with the date, name, and full text takes five minutes to save and prevents heartache later.
Reading Between The Lines
Obituaries are written by families, not journalists. The content reflects what the family wants to share, which means important details may be omitted. A child may be left out of the survival list due to estrangement. A first marriage may be unmentioned. A military service may be skipped entirely. These absences are as informative as what is included. I learned this when researching a distant uncle who was completely absent from his mother's obituary. The family had not spoken in twenty years. The omission was deliberate. Without that context, I might have assumed he had died earlier. Instead, I traced him through other records and found he was living in Nevada under a different name. The silence in the obituary was the clue. Photographs are another layer. An obituary photo from the 1970s may show clothing, background details, and even other people in the frame. I once spotted a brother standing behind my grandfather in a photo that the text never mentioned. That brother appeared in no other record I could find until I pulled the wider family tree and confirmed he existed.
Where To Go When SLtrib Is Not Enough
supplement SLtrib searches with the Utah Department of Health death index. It is free and covers all Utah deaths. The index includes date of death, age, county, and certificate number. The certificate number lets you request a full copy of the death record, which contains far more detail than any obituary. The FamilySearch catalog also has Utah obituary collections. Some are indexed, some are not. If you are researching a specific county, check whether the local historical society has transcribed SLtrib obituaries. The Salt Lake County Historical Society has done this for certain decades, and the transcripts are searchable online. For older records before SLtrib's digital archive begins, check the newspaper database at the Marriott Library at the University of Utah. They have microfilm and some digitized collections that go back further than the Tribune's own website.
A Note On Accuracy
Obituaries contain errors. Names are misspelled. Dates are wrong. Relationships are confused. This is not a criticism of the Tribune or the families who submit the notices. It is simply the reality of human memory and rushed writing during a difficult time. Treat every detail as a starting point, not a final answer. Cross-reference with at least one other source when possible. A cemetery record, a social security application, a census entry, or a church document can confirm or correct what the obituary says. I have corrected maybe thirty percent of the obituary information I encounter through this process. That is not a failure of the source. It is how genealogy works. The Salt Lake Tribune obituary section remains one of the best resources for Utah family history. It is accessible, reasonably priced for submissions, and extensive in coverage. Just remember that no single source tells the whole story. The obituary is a piece of a much larger puzzle, and the work of putting the pieces together is what makes the research worthwhile.
