Submitting and Reading Obituaries in the New Hampshire Register
Obituary writing and publishing in New Hampshire papers like the The Nh Register Obituaries Honoring Legacies Connecting Generations is something I've done for enough families to know where it usually goes wrong. The process itself is straightforward, but there are enough gaps in the published guidelines that you'll likely run into a snag unless you know what to watch for. Most families contact the funeral home first, and the funeral director handles the submission. If you're doing it yourself, you go through the newspaper's obituary desk. For the Concord-Lexington area, that's typically the Union Leader or its partner publications. You can submit online through their website, or email it directly to the classifieds/obituary editor. Phone submissions are accepted too, but I'd avoid them for anything longer than three paragraphs. Verbal submissions get shortened by the typesetter whether they should or not. The standard rate runs roughly $15 to $25 per inch of printed column width, or a flat fee around $200 to $400 depending on length and whether you include a photograph. A typical obituary comes out to about two to three inches. Full-length life story obituaries with multiple photos can push past six inches and cost significantly more.
What Actually Goes Into a Solid Obituary
The basics are name, age, city of residence, date of death, and a biography. Most people also include surviving family members, predeceased relatives, service details, and where memorial donations should go. The tone is whatever the family wants. Religious, secular, matter-of-fact, or warm — the paper rarely edits the sentiment, only the grammar and any claims that seem factually problematic. Photos are where things get complicated. High-resolution JPEGs work best. The minimum resolution the print desk typically requires is 300 DPI at the actual print size. A phone photo uploaded directly from an iPhone usually won't meet that standard. I've seen multiple submissions returned because the family sent a screenshot or a compressed image from a messaging app. The workaround is to email the original file and explicitly note that it's the full-resolution version, not a preview.
A Real Problem I Ran Into With a Submission
Last year a family submitted an obituary that listed a maiden name, a married name, and a name the deceased went by socially. The typesetter consolidated all three into the opening line in a way that made it read as three different people. The editor didn't catch it before it went to layout. By the time the family called, the paper had already run. We ended up running a clarification the next day at the family's expense, which was unnecessary stress for someone already dealing with a loss. The fix is simple: put the name exactly as you want it to appear in the lead sentence. Follow with "born [maiden name]..." in the body if you need the detail. Don't let the typesetter decide how to handle multiple names. One clear lead sentence prevents all of that.
Get the Full Details
Reading and Researching Old Obituaries
The Nh Register archives are a legitimate research resource for genealogy and local history. The Union Leader has digitized obituaries going back roughly to the early 2000s in full text searchable format. Earlier issues exist in microfilm at the New Hampshire State Library in Concord and at local historical societies. Some papers also have partnerships with subscription databases like Newspapers.com or GenealogyBank, but those usually lag behind the actual publication dates by a year or two. What most people don't realize is that obituary content changed dramatically over time. Pre-1970s obituaries in New Hampshire papers tend to be extremely brief — sometimes just a sentence or two with the funeral home listed. Longer, narrative obituaries became more common starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s. If you're researching an ancestor who died before that shift, you shouldn't assume the paper simply didn't publish a longer notice. The convention at the time was just shorter notices. You'll need to pull census records, cemetery records, and probate files to fill the gap.
Common Pitfalls Nobody Warns You About
Time of death versus date of death matters more than it should. If someone passes on a Sunday night and the paper runs on Monday morning, the submission might make it for Monday's edition with the correct date, but if it misses that cutoff it pushes to Tuesday. Families sometimes get confused when the published date doesn't match the actual date of death by a day. The deadline for same-day publication is usually midday, sometimes earlier depending on the paper's workflow that week. Another issue is the survivor list. Papers typically ask families to list immediate family only in the main text. Extended family goes in a separate paragraph or gets omitted entirely. I've seen submissions with forty-plus names that got cut down by half during editing, which upset some families who felt their input was being ignored. It wasn't. The space constraints are real. If you want everyone listed, ask about a separate memorial card or a dedicated online obituary page, which many papers offer at a lower cost.
Online vs Print Tradeoffs
Most obituaries now run both in print and on the paper's website. The online version usually includes the full text without inch-based pricing constraints, plus comment sections and photo gallery features. Print versions are still where older relatives tend to see the notice, and they carry more weight in certain communities. If your audience is mostly younger family members, the online-only route saves money. If you want the notice to reach people who don't check websites daily, print still matters. TheNh Register Obituaries Honoring Legacies Connecting Generations isn't just a tradition — it's a practical tool for preserving family and community history, even if the process has enough friction that you need to know how to navigate it.
