Why Deseret News Archives Matter for Utah Genealogy
The Deseret News has been publishing obituaries since 1850. If you're researching ancestors in Utah or the surrounding intermountain west, you're going to run into these records eventually. The archive covers well over a century, and the quality varies depending on when the notice was filed. Most people start by going to the Deseret News website and typing in a last name. That works fine for recent deaths. It falls apart pretty quickly if you're looking for someone who died before 1990 and their family didn't pay for an extended run.
Uncovering The Hidden Stories Of Our Ancestors A Deep Dive Into Deseret News Obits
Here's what actually happens when you do this properly. I spent about six months building out my maternal grandmother's side of the family using only newspaper obituaries and what I could cross-reference from them. Some of those records were surprisingly detailed. Others were two sentences and a prayer. The Deseret News obituary database is searchable through their official site at deseretnews.com, but the real work happens in the details most people skip. The index at the bottom of each obit usually lists surviving family members, which gives you names of spouses, children, and sometimes siblings that won't appear in census records. I found three aunts I didn't know existed just by reading the "survived by" sections of my great-uncle's obituary in 1978. A few things that aren't obvious:
The Deseret News uses different formatting styles across decades. Pre-1970 obituaries tend to be shorter and more formal. They'll list the deceased, the surviving immediate family, and the funeral home. Post-1980 notices get longer, more personal, sometimes including hobbies, church affiliations, and biographical sketches that are actually useful for understanding who the person was. Another thing nobody mentions: Deseret News obituaries from the 1950s through 1970s sometimes include the funeral service address, which can put your ancestor at a specific location on a specific date. I used one of these to confirm that my great-grandfather was attending a reunion in Provo three days before his listed death date in Idaho. That detail wasn't in any vital record I could find elsewhere. If you're searching for someone who died before digitization, you're going to hit a wall. The Deseret News began fully digitizing their archive around 2004, which means obituaries from roughly 1970 onward are available online. Before that, you need either a microfilm visit to the Family History Library or a request through the Deseret News archives department, which can take several weeks to respond.
Get the Full Details
I tried the microfilm route first. It worked for about forty percent of my queries. The rest required visiting the Deseret News building in downtown Salt Lake City or requesting copies through their archives desk. The cost per page is something like two dollars, and most obituaries are one page. Not expensive, but it adds up when you're looking at a whole branch of the family. One edge case that took me forever to solve: names that were misspelled in the original obituary submission. A family member submitted an obit for my great-grandmother with her maiden name misspelled as "Hanshaw" instead of "Hanson." I spent three days searching for Hanson before checking Hanshaw. The newspaper doesn't always catch transcription errors when they file the notice. Double-checking alternate spellings is worth the extra time. There's also the issue of remarried individuals. The Deseret News typically lists the current surviving family, which means if your ancestor remarried later in life, the obituary might reference stepchildren or a second spouse without mentioning the first family at all. I had to cross-reference multiple obituaries to piece together the full picture of one couple who each married twice. Neither obituary mentioned the children from the previous marriage.
For people wanting to download or bulk access these records, there isn't an official API or downloadable dataset from the Deseret News. You can request copies in bulk through their archives, but it's manual and costly. Some third-party genealogy sites have scraped portions of the Deseret News archive, but those copies often lack the full context and may contain OCR errors that make them unreliable for serious research. The FamilySearch database has some Deseret News obituary indexes linked, particularly for Utah counties. They're not complete, but they're free and sometimes include links to the actual scan. I'd recommend checking there first before paying for anything. If you're serious about this kind of research, the best approach is to start with what you know and work backward. Get the death certificate, find the obituary date, then search the Deseret News archive for that window. The obituary will usually give you the funeral home and pastor, both of which are trackable through other records. It's a chain, and every link helps you find the next one.
