The Pjstar Obituaries Peoria Il Honoring Lives Chronicling A Communitys History

Working With The Pjstar Obituaries As A Research Tool

The PJ Star obituaries in Peoria have been published since the early 1900s, though the format changed significantly after the merger with theJournal Star in the 1970s. If you are trying to trace a family line through these pages, you need to understand how the archive is actually organized before you start digging. Most people assume the obituaries run chronologically by date of death, but the online index and the physical microfilm do not always align the same way. I spent three months trying to locate an obituary for my great uncle, who died in 1983. The online search tool listed his death date as March 14, but the actual obituary appeared on page 12 of the March 15 edition under the "Death Notices" section, not in the main obituary block. The digital indexing had swapped two entries around. I ended up going through six days of microfilm before I found it. The workaround was to search by the newspaper's internal edition number rather than relying on the date alone. That edition number is printed in small type at the bottom of the front page, right above the street address line.

The Pjstar Obituaries Peoria Il Honoring Lives Chronicling A Communitys History

The archives at the Peoria Public Library are what most researchers end up using, and they are not as straightforward as they look. The microfilm readers require you to load reels manually and mark your frame references with a pen. The digital subscription service that the library subscribes to has search functionality, but it only covers obituaries from roughly 2002 onward in a searchable format. Before that, you are working with scanned images that may or may not have OCR data attached. Here is what actually works when you sit down at the microfilm reader. First, confirm the exact date range. Obituaries for someone who died on a Wednesday typically appear on Thursday or Friday, but if the death occurred on a Sunday or Monday, the paper sometimes held the notice until Tuesday. The PJ Star had a policy of holding late-breaking obituaries for up to 48 hours during the 1990s, which means you can easily miss the first appearance if you are only searching the date of death. Before going to the library, pull the library catalog record for the specific volume you need. The Peoria Public Library microfiche collection runs from 1898 to 2008 in sequential order, and each volume covers approximately four to six months. If you request the wrong volume, you will waste an hour waiting for interlibrary loan or a second trip to the reference desk. The volume numbers are not intuitive, so write down the call number before you leave home.

There is a less common route through the Illinois State Archives in Springfield, but it only makes sense if you are dealing with pre-1870 records or if you need certified copies for legal purposes. The PJ Star archives there are incomplete for the 20th century, and the processing time is measured in weeks, not days. Most genealogists skip this option unless they have a specific reason to.

What The Obituaries Actually Contain And What They Leave Out

A standard PJ Star obituary from the 1980s through 2005 typically includes the full name, age, residence address, surviving family members, and the funeral home handling arrangements. The level of detail varies considerably depending on who wrote the notice. Family members often submitted bare-bones text, while newspaper staff would flesh out longer pieces for community figures or long-term residents. The addresses are the most useful data point for verification. A residence address from 1978 can confirm a family member's location in city directories or census records from the same period. I found a cousin's 1965 address in an obituary that matched a city directory entry exactly, which settled a dispute about which branch of the family had moved to Peoria first. The address field is almost never transcribed in online databases, so physical or microfilm research remains necessary for that detail. Pay attention to the funeral home notation. The name of the funeral home can point you toward additional records. Some older facilities kept client ledgers that included death certificates, burial plots, and sometimes even photographs of the deceased. The Dyer Funeral Home on WarMemorial Blvd, for example, maintained records from 1920 to 1995 that were later donated to the Peoria Historical Society. Those records are not indexed online, but a phone call to the historical society can confirm whether a specific name appears in their collection.

The missing information is equally important. Religious affiliation is rarely stated explicitly. Marital status is usually implied rather than documented. The cause of death is almost never included unless it was exceptionally notable, and even then the language is typically vague. If you are looking for medical details, the obituary is not the place to find them. The death certificate filed with the county clerk is a separate document that requires a different request process.

Common Pitfalls When Researching These Records

Name variations are the biggest source of errors. The PJ Star indexing sometimes abbreviated middle names or recorded nicknames as legal names. I encountered an obituary where "Robert James Thompson" was listed as "Bob J. Thompson" in the headline but "Robert James" in the body text. The online search engine treated these as two different people until I cross-referenced the address and age. Spelling of surnames varied across decades. Italian and Eastern European names were frequently anglicized differently by different newspaper staff. The same family name might appear as "Kowalski" in one obituary and "Kowalsky" in another if two different reporters handled the notices. Running a phonetic search or checking multiple spelling variations is necessary if you hit dead ends. The 1994 strike by the PJ Star union caused a gap in coverage. Obituaries from April through July of that year are either missing from the microfilm or were reproduced from wire service copies that lack the usual detail. If a family member died during that window, you will need to check alternative sources like the Chicago Tribune archive or local radio station memorials rather than assuming the record does not exist.

Digital Access Options And Their Limitations

Ancestry.com and Fold3 havePJ Star obituary collections, but they are incomplete. Ancestry's database covers approximately 1995 to 2015 for Peoria, with significant gaps in 2003 and 2009. Fold3 has a smaller selection focused on military personnel. Neither platform includes the address data that makes physical archive research worthwhile. The Peoria Public Library offers remote access to their digital newspaper archive for cardholders. You need to verify your library card through their authentication system, and access is limited to a certain number of hours per week. The interface is functional but slow, and full-page image downloads require a separate request through the library's digital reproductions service, which charges $0.25 per page plus handling fees. If you need a large number of obituaries for a research project, the most efficient path is to hire a local genealogist who already has access and familiarity with the collection. Rates in Peoria typically run between $40 and $75 per hour, and a competent researcher can pull and transcribe a full year of obituaries in about six to eight hours. Doing it yourself across multiple years will take considerably longer and involves more dead ends.

Related Records To Check After Finding An Obituary

The Peoria County Clerk's office maintains death certificates on file. Once you have confirmed a death through the obituary, you can request a certified copy using the obituary date and full name as reference points. The cost is $15 per copy, and processing takes about ten business days. This is the document that contains the most complete demographic data, including parents' names, birth dates, and occupational information. Burial records at local cemeteries often reference the newspaper source. The Glenwood Cemetery records, for instance, note the funeral home and date of interment alongside the obituary citation. These records are maintained by the cemetery association rather than the county, so they require a separate inquiry. Online databases like Find a Grave may have entries, but the grave photographs and GPS coordinates are user-submitted and frequently contain errors. Social security death index matches can confirm whether an obituary corresponds to a filed claim. If the SSDI shows a death date that differs from the obituary by more than a few days, investigate further. This usually indicates either an administrative delay in reporting or a case where the person died elsewhere but the obituary was filed through a Peoria funeral home. Both scenarios are common in migration patterns where families maintained ties to their original city.