Finding the Right Pages
The Florence Times Daily runs obituaries every day. Usually in the back section or on their website. If you are looking for someone who died recently, that is where you start. It sounds simple, but people make it harder than it needs to be. I spent years helping people track down obituary records for funeral homes and families. The paper has been around since the late 1800s, so there is a lot of history here. Florence, Alabama sits right along the Tennessee River, and the community tends to stick together when someone passes. That shows up in the obits. Here is how the actual process works. You go to the Times Daily website. They have an obituary search page. You can search by name, date range, or keywords. The search index covers roughly the last ten years online. Older material requires a visit to microfilm or contacting the paper directly. Most people do not realize that gap exists until they run into it.
I remember one case last spring. A woman came to me looking for her grandfather's obituary from 1998. She expected it online. It was not there. The paper does not have complete digitization going back that far. What I ended up doing was filing a request through the Wilson County public library, which holds the microfilm collection for LaSalle Parish and the Florence area. It took three business days. They sent us a scanned copy for about twenty-five dollars. If you need something pre-2015, budget time and a small fee. It is not broken. That is just how newspaper archives work. The obituaries themselves vary. Some are full-length pieces written by family members, usually running three to five hundred words. Others are brief notices prepared by the funeral home with just the essentials. The longer ones tend to list survivors, service details, and sometimes a short paragraph about the person's life. The shorter ones just give dates and the funeral home name. If you are researching family history, the obituary is useful but incomplete. It rarely mentions parents unless they are still alive at the time of death. Siblings get listed, but cousins and in-laws usually do not. I have found that cross-referencing the death certificate from the Alabama Department of Public Health gives you the full picture. Death certificates are public records in Alabama. You can order copies online or through the county health department where the death occurred. It costs around seventeen dollars per copy.
One thing that trips people up: the name on the obituary might not match the name on official records. People go by nicknames, or they might be listed under a middle name in the paper but a maiden name on legal documents. Always keep a list of possible name variations when searching. I usually tell people to search with and without middle initials, and to try phonetic spellings if the family had a distinctive pronunciation. The Times Daily also runs bereavement notices that are different from full obituaries. Those are shorter paid announcements. Sometimes a family chooses that route instead of a full obituary. They appear in the same section, so you will see them without needing a separate search. This is worth knowing because it expands your results if the initial search comes up empty. For recent deaths, the paper typically publishes the obituary within twenty-four to forty-eight hours of the death. Same-day publication happens, but it is less common. If someone dies on a weekend, the notice usually appears Monday morning if the funeral home submitted it Friday afternoon. Timing matters if you are trying to attend services and need to know the details quickly.
Get the Full Details
If you need physical copies for genealogy purposes, the Alabama Department of Archives and History in Montgomery accepts donations of obituary clippings. They maintain a vertical file collection that researchers can access. It is free. You just have to request it by mail or visit in person during business hours. I have used that collection multiple times when the newspaper archives did not have what I needed. There is a practical downside to relying only on the Times Daily for obituaries. Some families publish in multiple outlets. If the deceased attended a church outside the main congregation or had family in neighboring counties, there might be a notice in the Muscle Shoals Times or the Sheffield Independent as well. I have seen cases where the Florence Times Daily notice was minimal while a nearby paper had a much more detailed account. Checking adjacent publications takes maybe ten extra minutes and can fill in gaps. The cost of publishing an obituary in the Times Daily runs roughly two to three dollars per line, with a minimum charge. Most obituaries fall between eight and fifteen lines. Family members usually coordinate this through the funeral home handling arrangements. The funeral director submits the text and handles the billing. You do not need to contact the newspaper yourself unless you are doing research after the fact.
Online archives like Ancestry and Legacy.com pull content from various newspapers, including the Times Daily. These services are convenient but not complete. They sometimes miss notices or publish abbreviated versions. I treat them as starting points, not final sources. If I need the full text for legal or genealogical purposes, I go straight to the paper or its archives. If you are dealing with a recent loss and just trying to find an obituary for a loved one, the fastest route is the Times Daily website obituary search. Enter the name and narrow the date range to a week before and after the expected death date. That usually lands you the right notice immediately. From there you can find service information, funeral home contact details, and sometimes links to online memorials where people share condolences. The shared grief piece that comes with reading these obituaries is real. Florence is a small city, and you will often see the same funeral homes and the same churches listed repeatedly. It reminds you that the community is close-knit. That can be either comforting or overwhelming depending on where you are in the process. There is no wrong reaction to it.
