Working With The Meadville Tribune Obituaries Archive
The Meadville Tribune is the primary newspaper covering Crawford County, Pennsylvania. If you are researching family history in that area, their obituary archive is probably your first stop. I have spent enough time digging through these records to know what works and what wastes your afternoon. Most people assume the archive is just a searchable database of death notices. It is not that simple. The Tribune has been publishing since 1852, and the format of their obituaries changed dramatically over time. Pre-1950s notices are often two or three lines listing the deceased, date of death, and survivor names. Post-1970s obituaries tend to be longer, sometimes including biographical sketches, church affiliations, and service details. The online archive at meadvilletribune.com has a search function, but it is nowhere near comprehensive. Their digitization effort covers roughly the last fifteen years with varying completeness. Going further back requires either microfilm research at the Meadville Public Library or using subscription databases like Newspapers.com or GenealogyBank.
I ran into a specific problem last year while tracking down a great-aunt who died in 1963. The online search returned nothing. Her name was Margaret Lennox, and she had married into the Whisler family. I tried variations of the spelling, different dates, even searching for her maiden name. Nothing. The workaround was straightforward but not obvious. I went directly to the library's microfilm reader and pulled the December 1963 roll. Her obituary ran on page 4 alongside three others from the same week. The digital index had simply missed it, likely because the OCR misread a faded headline or because the clipping was physically damaged on the original film. Here is something most genealogy guides do not mention: obituary indexes are notoriously unreliable for this region. The Tribune did not maintain a consistent subject index for most of the twentieth century. Some years have alphabetical supplements attached to the front of the microfilm. Most do not. You learn to read chronologically rather than searching by name. This means pulling week after week of microfilm if your ancestor's death date is only approximate. Another counter-intuitive detail involves cross-referencing. When an obituary mentions a surviving brother or sister who married into another local family, that sibling's obituary later in the archive often contains additional information about your original ancestor. I have rebuilt entire family trees this way, moving backward and forward through decades of papers. A 1978 obituary for a man named Robert Crumley listed his mother as Helen Shriver Crumley, who had died in 1954. The 1954 obituary, which I would have found anyway, mentioned Robert's wife and children by name, filling gaps I had not known existed.
The practical process for anyone serious about this work goes like this. Start with the online archive for recent deaths to establish a timeline. Then visit the library and pull microfilm for the relevant decades. Bring a notebook. The microfilm reader at the Meadville Public Library is operational but the lighting makes it difficult to read faded print without good eyes or a magnifying attachment. They have those attachments available at the circulation desk. If you cannot visit in person, some researchers use Ancestry.com's historical records section, which includes selected Meadville Tribune content. The coverage is spotty and not clearly documented. You might find a collection from one year and nothing from the surrounding years. Do not rely on it as a complete source. There are real limitations here. The archive has gaps. War years saw reduced publication frequency, and some weeks were lost entirely due to newsprint shortages. There is no master finding aid that tells you which volumes are missing. The library staff can point you to what they have on the shelves, but they do not maintain a complete inventory of absent issues.
Get the Full Details
Photocopying or scanning microfilm is usually permitted at these libraries, but policies vary. Call ahead. Some readers charge per page for reproduction. Others require you to bring your own camera adapter. The Meadville location typically allows personal photography of the film for research purposes at no charge, but they will not make copies for you. For the most part, this research takes patience and a willingness to read material that has nothing to do with your target family. You will spend considerable time scanning obituaries for people you will never research again. That is just how microfilm works. The reward is finding details that never made it into any other record, like the name of a neighborhood church or the street where a family lived before the census taker passed through. The Tribune also occasionally published death notices in the Sunday edition that did not appear in the daily paper. If you are researching someone who died on a weekday, check the Sunday edition for the following week. I found a complete death notice for my great-grandfather that only existed in the Sunday supplement. The daily version had only a brief line acknowledging the funeral arrangements.
If you are starting fresh, I would recommend beginning with the Meadville Public Library's genealogy reference section. They have published guides for the local historical society that list which years are available on microfilm and which are held elsewhere. This saves you from assuming a complete run exists when parts are actually stored in a climate-controlled facility in Pittsburgh.
