Reading Old Death Notices: What You Actually Get Out of Them
Most people search death notices for one reason — they want to confirm a relative made it through a war, or fill in a missing birth year for a family tree. The Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier death notices do that, but they do other things too. I spent three days last November tracking down a great-uncle who served in Korea. The obit gave me his service number, his discharge date, and the name of the VFW post he belonged to. The notice itself was eight paragraphs. What I needed was one line buried in the middle. Here is how the process works in practice.The Unveiling Of Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier Death Notices A Legacy Of Remembering
The paper started publishing death notices formally in the early 1900s, though families had been submitting brief cards to the society pages even earlier. The format changed slowly over time. In the 1920s you get two or three sentences with a funeral home name. By the 1960s you get a full paragraph listing survivors, military service, church affiliation, and which cemetery the body went to. If you are looking for someone born before 1920, you will likely hit a wall. The Courier did not carry detailed obituaries for rural residents outside Waterloo until the late 1940s. Before that, most death notices were handled by the county recorder or mentioned in the church bulletin. I ran into this exact problem when trying to find my grandmother's first cousin, who died in 1918 during the flu pandemic. The death notice in the Courier was three lines. The actual cause of death, the name of the attending physician, and the burial plot location were all in the Black Hawk County health department records, which required a separate request.The workaround I ended up using was to file a public records request with the Iowa Department of Public Health for the original death certificate. That cost me $15 and took about ten business days. The certificate had the informant's name, which turned out to be my great-grandmother's sister. That gave me the second family line I needed.
What a Death Notice Actually Contains
A standard obit in the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier will include:- Full legal name at death
- Age at death
- Date of death
- Place of death (usually home or hospital)
- Surviving family members — spouse, children, sometimes grandchildren
- Predeceased relatives
- Funeral home handling arrangements
- Service time and location
- Cemetery location
- Military service if applicable
- Employer or union affiliation
- Church or organization membership
Where to Find These Notices
The Courier's own archive is paywalled past about five years. Free access exists through a few channels.LocalLibrary — The Waterloo Public Library has microfilm going back to 1852. You can view it on-site. It is not digitized, so you need to bring a camera or use their scanner. I recommend bringing your own SD card. Their equipment is slow and the lighting on the microfilm reader is dim.
Ancestry.com — The Iowa, U.S., Death Records, 1900-1961 collection includes some Courier notices that were transcribed separately from the state certificates. It is not complete, but it catches notices that the state never received because the death happened out of state.
Find a Grave — Many cemetery records have been cross-referenced with Courier obituaries. If you know the cemetery, you can work backward from the headstone photo to the original notice.
Newspapers.com — They have the Courier digitized from 1998 forward. Pre-1998 is mostly blank. I wasted two hours on a subscription before realizing the gap. The page numbers for that era are listed in the library's finding aids, which you can request by phone.
The Problem With Searching by Name
Name searches in old newspaper databases are unreliable for a few reasons. OCR misreads "Wm." as "Win." all the time. Abbreviations like "Jas." become "Jas" or "Jass." Middle initials are often dropped or swapped. I spent an afternoon chasing a "Robert Smith" who did not exist, only to find the actual person was listed as "R. C. Smith" with a middle initial that the search engine had stripped out. The fix is to search by date range and location instead. Narrow the window to the week of death if you have any idea when it happened. Filter by Waterloo or Black Hawk County. Then scroll through the actual pages. It takes longer, but you catch entries the database missed.Military Service Notations
If the deceased served, the notice usually mentions it. Post-1945 notices tend to include branch, rank, and sometimes unit. Pre-1945 notices are vaguer — "served in the Great War" or " veteran of the Spanish-American War" with no specifics. I found a notice for a man who listed "U.S. Army 1917-1919" but left off that he was in the 89th Infantry Division, which is where he contracted trench fever. The division name appeared in his draft registration card at the National Archives, not in the notice. That card cost nothing to request and arrived in about three weeks.Common Mistakes People Make
Assuming the death date matches the notice date. Notices often appear one to three days after death, but sometimes a week later if the family is delayed. The Funeral home handles the submission, and they have their own timelines. Searching only the obit section. Some deaths are mentioned in the news section instead, especially if there was an accident or foul play. The Courier's accident reports from the 1930s sometimes include the victim's name without a full obit. Check the front page area too. Ignoring the cemetery record. If the notice mentions Oakdale Cemetery, the plot map might have the exact section and lot number. That helps you find the headstone, which sometimes has information the notice left out, like birth date or maiden name.
Get the Full Details
When the Notice Is Missing
Some families chose not to publish. Others could not afford it. The Courier charged by the line in the early decades, which meant a short notice could run $5 to $15 — not trivial money in 1920. If you cannot find a notice, check the church records where the family attended. Methodist, Baptist, and Lutheran churches in the Waterloo area kept membership rolls that often noted when a member died and were buried. I used a Lutheran church register to confirm a death that had no Courier notice, then used that register entry to locate the family in the 1930 census.What to Do After You Find It
Write down everything. The notice text, the page number, the date of the paper, and the URL if you viewed it online. OCR errors happen when you re-search later, and having the original citation lets you verify.Cross-reference with the death certificate. The notice and the certificate usually agree, but sometimes the notice has the wrong spouse name because the family provided incorrect information. The certificate, filed by the funeral director, is more likely to be accurate. Check the next issue. Sometimes the Courier runs a correction or an addendum the following week, especially if the service time was wrong or a survivor was omitted. I found one case where the original notice listed the deceased as married, but the follow-up note clarified he was divorced. That detail mattered for my inheritance research.
My Recommendation
Start with the library microfilm if you are in the area. It is free and complete. If you are far away, use Ancestry or Newspapers.com for post-1950 notices, and accept that pre-1950 will require either a library visit or a records request. The process is slower than you expect, but the information you get — especially military details and exact cemetery locations — is worth the extra step.One more thing. The Courier's index for 1900 to 1950 is not fully online. The library has card catalogs in the basement, and they are handwritten. The handwriting varies by librarian. Take your time reading those cards. I once misread "dau" as "son" and spent a week tracking the wrong person. A second pair of eyes helps.
