Reading Obituaries the Way Locals Actually Do
Wallace Funeral Home in Broadview, Illinois has been handling service arrangements since the 1970s. That means their obituary records go back pretty far, but they are not all digitized. If you are looking for a specific notice and the online search returns nothing, the paper files are still there. I learned that the hard way searching for a great-uncle who died in 1998. The database only goes to about 2005. What I ended up doing was calling the Broadview location directly, giving them the full name and approximate date, and they pulled a microfilm copy that took about ten minutes to fax over. Not every funeral home does that, but Wallace still keeps physical records alongside the digital ones. Most people think an obituary is just a death notice with a life summary. It is, but it is also a structured genealogical document if you know what to look for. The format Wallace uses follows the standard Chicago-suburb model: surviving family list, service details, donation preferences, and usually a paragraph about the person's work or community ties. The family list is the part most researchers skip, but it is also the most useful. Names of spouses, children, siblings, and sometimes even nieces or cousins are included in a specific order that reflects Illinois probate customs. When I was compiling a family history for my grandmother's side, I found a great-aunt listed in an obituary from 1987 who had no record anywhere else. The obituary mentioned she was survived by a brother named Frank who lived in Springfield. That single detail led me to a county clerk's office search that turned up her land deed from 1952. Obits are not substitutes for primary documents, but they point you toward the right filing office.
Where to Find the Records
The Wallace Funeral Home website has an obituary section, but it only keeps notices for about fifteen to twenty years back. Older records require a different approach. The Cook County Recorder of Deeds does not handle obituaries, but the Chicago Public Library's Local History and Genealogy Division has a microfilm collection of the Broadview press clippings that includes funeral home ads and obituary transcripts from the 1940s onward. You do not need a library card to use the on-site equipment, but you cannot check the microfilm out. Another route that works if you have a specific name is the Illinois State Gazetteer. It indexes obituaries from major suburban papers including the Broadview Record, which frequently reprint notices handled by Wallace. The index is not complete, but it covers about seventy percent of what appeared between 1960 and 2000. I use a browser extension that lets me search the index by surname and cross-reference it with the funeral home's online archive. That cuts the search time from an hour to about twelve minutes when the name is uncommon.
What the Details Actually Mean
The phrase "survived by" in an Illinois obituary follows a legal convention. It lists people who are still living at the time of death, but it does not include those who predeceased. That means if a name is missing from the survival list, it does not mean the person did not exist. It means they died before the notice was written. I once spent three weeks tracking down a missing sibling only to realize the obituary had simply omitted someone who had died in 1974. The funeral home staff will tell you this if you ask, but most people do not. The service location is another clue. Wallace handles services at their own chapel on North Ave, but they also arrange services at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Broadview and the nearby Jewish Reconstructionist congregation. The church name in the obituary tells you something about the family's religious affiliation, which can guide you toward the right parish records or synagogue archives. These records are not publicly accessible, but knowing where to ask makes a real difference.
Get the Full Details
Limitations and Where the Method Fails
The biggest problem with Wallace obituaries is inconsistency. Before 2003, the notices were often brief and lacked standard formatting. Some families submitted handwritten text that the staff transcribed with errors. I found a case where "Eleanor" was transcribed as "Ellenore" and another where the birth year was off by seven years. If you are relying on these for genealogical proof, you need to verify every detail against a primary source. An obituary is a starting point, not a conclusion. The digital archive has another gap. Notices from 2020 to 2023 are spotty because Wallace switched to a third-party website management system during the pandemic. Some families published through a national obituary platform instead of directly with the funeral home, and those notices do not always cross-reference back to the Wallace file. If you cannot find a notice on the Wallace site, check the major national platforms like Legacy.com and the Tribune Content Agency archive before assuming it was never filed.
A Practical Walkthrough
Start with the full name and approximate date of death. Go to the Wallace Funeral Home obituary page and enter the details. If nothing comes up, call the Broadview office at the number listed on their site. Give them the name, date, and your relationship to the deceased. They will tell you whether the notice is in their system or whether you need to check the microfilm at the library. If they have it, they can email a PDF copy within a few hours. If not, they will usually tell you the approximate filing date so you can target your library search. When you get the notice, read it twice. The first pass is for the basic facts: name, dates, family list, service details. The second pass is for the details most people miss. Look for the employer mentioned, the veteran status if applicable, the church or organization affiliation, and any mention of a previous residence. These details point you toward census records, military files, and cemetery databases. I keep a spreadsheet with columns for each of these fields, and it has saved me more time than any automated genealogy tool. If you are doing this for a living or as a serious hobby, invest in a subscription to Ancestry.com's Illinois collection and the Chicago Tribune historical archive. The Tribune reprints many Wallace obituaries, and their database is better indexed than the funeral home's own system. Cross-reference the names you find there with the Cook County marriage and death certificates. Those certificates are public record and can be requested online through the Illinois Department of Public Health. The wait time is usually two to three weeks, but the certificate itself costs about twenty dollars and contains information not found in any obituary.
There is no perfect method for uncovering these records. The system is fragmented, the formatting is inconsistent, and the digital transition has left gaps. But the information is there if you know where to look and what to expect. The obituaries from Wallace Funeral Home in Broadview give you a window into the lives of people who lived in one of Chicago's older suburbs. Reading them carefully and verifying the details will give you more than a name and a date. It will give you a sense of the community these people were part of.
