Searching Archives Instead of Buying Another History Book
I spent three weeks last year tracking down a great-uncle who died in 1962, living in a row house on Rampart Street that no longer exists. The property records were vague, the family stories contradictory, and the census data incomplete. What actually solved it was finding his Times-Picayune obituary from May 14th of that year, which listed his employer, his widow's maiden name, and the funeral home that handled arrangements. From there I traced the rest. This is what most people don't realize about the Times-Picayune archive: it's not just a collection of death notices. It's one of the most detailed demographic records of New Orleans ever compiled, and for certain neighborhoods and time periods it's essentially the only record that exists at all.
How to Access Times Picayune Obituaries Reveal A Window Into New Orleans History
The primary access point is the NOLA.com obituaries section, which maintains the full archive going back to when the paper digitized its records. You can search by name, date range, and neighborhood. The Tulane University library also maintains a microfilm and digital collection that includes the earlier papers, though their search interface is less intuitive than the online version. Here's what I'd suggest doing if you're starting a research project: go to the NOLA.com obituaries search page and pull every result for a specific surname within a five-year window. Don't refine it further yet. Just get the raw dataset. I usually export these into a spreadsheet and sort by date, then by neighborhood. The pattern of migration becomes visible within an hour of looking at the data this way. You'll notice certain streets cluster together in the results. Magazine Street, Esplanade, Broadmoor, Treme, the Seventh Ward. These aren't accidents. They map directly onto the redlining maps from the 1930s and the earlier French Quarter evacuation orders from the 1950s. The obituaries tell you where people lived, where they died, and often where they were born. Cross-reference that with city directory data and you've got a picture that's far more complete than what you'll find in any single published book.
What the Records Actually Contain
A standard Times-Picayune obituary from the 1950s through the 1990s typically includes: full name including middle name or nickname, date and place of death, age at death, surviving family members with their relationships and sometimes their addresses, predecessor deaths (spouses, parents, children who died before the subject), employer or retired occupation, military service details, church affiliation, funeral home, and burial location. The burial location is the part most people overlook. It usually names the cemetery directly — Metairie, Lakewood, St. Louis No. 1, Glendale, Holy Cross. That single field has opened more doors for my research than anything else in the notice. The earlier notices, pre-1970s, tend to be shorter and less structured. They sometimes omit the burial site entirely and give only the funeral home address, which you can then trace to a specific cemetery. The later notices get longer and more standardized, which makes them easier to search but occasionally less detailed about family connections. One thing that trips people up: the paper used to publish obituaries from other outlets as reprints. If you're researching someone who died in, say, Baton Rouge or Houston but had family in New Orleans, check whether the notice is an original or a wire reprint. The formatting and the included details usually give it away. Original Picayune notices list local funeral homes and New Orleans-area cemeteries. Reprints tend to reference out-of-town providers.
Get the Full Details
Edge Cases and What to Do When the Archive Fails
I ran into a specific problem last spring that took me two days to resolve. I was looking for the obituary of a woman named Marie Broussard who died around 1978 in the Seventh Ward. The name was common enough that the search returned forty-plus results. None of them matched. I checked the microfilm at Tulane and found nothing under that name. The census showed she was alive in 1970 at a specific address on Burgundy Street. The workaround was to search by address instead of by name. The NOLA.com archive allows neighborhood and street-level filtering if you know the area. I pulled all obituaries from the Burgundy Street corridor between 1975 and 1980, scanned through the results manually, and found her under a different name — she'd been married twice and the obituary used her second husband's surname, which wasn't Broussard at all. This is a recurring issue with New Orleans records. Marriages, remariages, and the practice of using a mother's surname instead of a father's means that one person can appear under three or four different surnames across their lifetime. Always search by address and by known aliases, not just the name you think you have. Another common failure mode: notices from the 1940s and earlier are often incomplete in the digital archive. The paper didn't digitize every single page, and some issues are missing from the online collection. If you hit a dead end there, the microfilm at the main library on Loyola Avenue or the state archive in downtown New Orleans will have what's missing. It takes longer to access but it's reliable.
Pitfalls That Waste Time
The biggest waste I see is people searching only the death notices and ignoring the related articles. The Picayune also published bereavement updates, memorial service announcements, and sometimes even short biographical sketches in the weekend sections. A death might be announced on a Tuesday, but the full life summary could appear in Sunday's paper three days later. If you only pull the obituary, you're missing roughly a third of the available detail. A second pitfall is assuming the dates are always accurate. I've seen obituaries with death dates that contradict the burial record by several days, usually because the family reported the date of the funeral rather than the date of death. This matters if you're cross-referencing with hospital records or coroner files. Always treat the obituary date as approximate unless it's corroborated by another source. The archive also has gaps around major weather events. The 2005 hurricane period disrupted normal publishing and record-keeping. Some notices from late August and September 2005 are missing or merged with later issues. If you're researching deaths from that period, check multiple months and also look at the volunteer-run memorials that appeared on local community boards, which sometimes captured notices the paper never printed.
What This Can and Can't Tell You
The Times-Picayune obituary archive is excellent for tracing family lines, mapping neighborhood changes, and understanding the occupational and religious composition of New Orleans over the last century. It's less useful for anything involving cause of death — those details are rarely included, and when they are, they're usually vague. It's also unreliable for determining exact birth dates, since families often rounded ages or reported incorrectly, particularly for older relatives. If you're doing serious genealogical work, pair the obituaries with the city's death certificates, which are available through the Louisiana Department of Health. The certificates give you the medical details the obituary omits. For property and neighborhood research, combine the obituaries with the old Sanborn fire insurance maps and the 1950 and 1960 city directories. The obituary gives you the name and the cemetery; the directory tells you what building they lived in and what they did for work. The archive is free to search online. No subscription is required for the basic obituary database. The full-text search works well for names and dates but struggles with handwritten or poorly scanned pre-1980 notices, so budget extra time if you're working with older records. Most people spend about an hour per family line getting a usable result set, assuming they know the right neighborhoods to filter by.
