Researching Binghamton Obituaries Is Messier Than You Think
The Press & Sun Bulletin in Binghamton, NY has been publishing obituaries since the late 1800s. Most people don't realize that the paper stopped printing its full obituary section physically around 2019 and moved most content online. If you're trying to track down a specific obit from before that transition, you are going to run into problems. I spent about three weeks last year trying to locate an obituary for a great-uncle who died in 2003. The paper's digital archive only goes back to roughly 2015 for full-text search. Before that, everything lives on microfilm at the Broome County Historical Society or the Binghamton public library. You can't just Google it and get a clean PDF. I had to physically go to the library, request the microfilm reel, and scan the pages myself. It took four hours of setup time plus another two figuring out which reel number corresponded to which month.
Uncovering The Stories Behind The Dead The Significance Of Press Sun Bulletin Binghamton Ny Obituaries
What makes these obituaries worth digging through isn't the death dates and funeral home names. It's the biographical detail that got printed before modern obituary writing shifted toward brevity. An obit from 1978 might contain the full list of surviving children, the deceased's employer for forty years, military service details, church memberships, and the names of siblings who predeceased them. A 2023 obit might be two paragraphs and a photo link. The shift happened because newspapers started charging per line or per word for obituary submissions. Families began writing shorter copy to save money. The Press & Sun Bulletin was no exception. So if you want rich genealogical detail, you have to target the older records specifically. Here is how I actually approach pulling information from these archives.
Where The Records Actually Live
The primary physical repository is the New York State Research Room at the Binghamton Public Library on Court Street. They hold microfilm copies of the Press & Sun Bulletin going back to 1887. You need a library card to access the microfilm readers, but anyone can get one for free by providing proof of address. The researchers will pull the reel for you if you ask, but there is usually a wait. On a busy Saturday I once waited forty minutes before someone could help me with a single reel. The Broome County Historical Society on Hall Avenue also holds copies. Their holdings overlap with the library but sometimes include versions the library does not, particularly for the early 1900s when the paper had different editions. If you are doing serious work, plan to visit both locations on different days. Online, newspaperarchive.com has a subscription that includes the Press & Sun Bulletin. The search interface is functional but the OCR quality varies wildly depending on the print quality of the original page. Older sections with faint ink or newsprint that was already yellowing when photographed produce garbage search results. I found an obit on newspaperarchive.com that the search engine missed entirely because the typeface was set in a condensed column format and the OCR read the wrong characters. I had to browse the issue manually by date to find it.
Get the Full Details
FamilySearch.org has some obituary indexes for New York but they are incomplete for Binghamton specifically. Do not rely on them as a primary source. They are useful as a secondary confirmation tool.
The Practical Workflow
Start with what you already know. Get the full name, approximate death date, and any middle names or initials. Then check newspaperarchive.com first because it is faster than going to a physical location. Run the search with the person's last name and the year range. If nothing comes up, expand the date range by two years on either side. If the online search fails, call the Binghamton Public Library reference desk before showing up. Ask which microfilm reels cover the months you need. They can tell you if a particular reel is checked out or missing. I wasted a trip in 2022 because the librarian didn't mention that the October through December 1995 reels were temporarily unavailable due to film degradation. Showing up unannounced is not efficient. Once you are at the microfilm reader, do not just scroll through looking for the name. Search by date first if you have it. Pull the exact date and scroll to the obituary section, which is typically on the front pages or in a dedicated section. Scan column by column. Sometimes the obit is listed under a variation of the name. I found a record where the obit used "William J. Hartsock" but the index listed him as "Wm. J. Hartsock" because the typesetter abbreviated it.
What You Will Find And What You Won't
Obituaries from the 1950s through the 1980s in the Press & Sun Bulletin tend to follow a fairly consistent format. They list the deceased, age, residence, occupation, surviving family members, predeceased relatives, military service, religious affiliation, and funeral arrangements. Some include a brief biographical paragraph that mentions where they went to school, clubs they belonged to, or hobbies. This is the material that genealogists actually use. What you will not find in these obituaries is medical cause of death in most cases. That information went to the death certificate, not the newspaper. You need to request the official death record from the New York State Department of Health if you need that detail. For deaths before 1956, those records are held at the Broome County Clerk's office and require a direct request with proper identification proving your relationship to the deceased. There is also a gap in coverage for certain populations. Immigrant communities, particularly Italian and Eastern European families who settled in Binghamton's textile mill districts, sometimes had obituaries published in ethnic newspapers instead of the Press & Sun Bulletin. The L'Opinione del popolo and other ethnic press outlets ran their own notices. If your ancestor is not showing up in the main paper, check whether a community newspaper might have carried the notice instead.
Common Mistakes That Waste Time
Searching only by first and last name without accounting for nicknames is the biggest error. "Robert" becomes "Bob" or "Bobby" in the printed text. "Elizabeth" becomes "Liz" or "Beth" or "Eliza." I spent two hours searching for "Margaret Ann Kowalski" before realizing the obit listed her as "Marge Kowalski." The search never would have found it. Another mistake is assuming the date of death equals the date of the obituary. Newspapers often publish the obit one or two days after death, sometimes three or four if the family needed time to gather information. I once searched the wrong date because the death occurred on a Sunday and the obit did not appear until Tuesday's edition. Checking a three-day window on either side of the known death date is standard practice. A third mistake is not checking for companion obituaries. Spouses who died within a year or two of each other sometimes had obituaries or were published on the same page. If you are researching a couple, search both names simultaneously and look for shared references.
Digitization Gaps You Should Know About
Not every issue of the Press & Sun Bulletin has been digitized for online access. The library has been working through the microfilm collection but the process is slow. There are known gaps, particularly from the years 1918 through 1921, where certain issues are missing from the microfilm copies. The library catalog notes these gaps but they are not always easy to spot unless you are browsing chronologically. The 2020 pandemic also disrupted access. Several microfilm readers were taken out of service for sanitation and repair. Even now, the equipment is older and failures happen without warning. I had a reader jam mid-session and lost about twenty minutes while staff tried to clear it. Bring patience and have a backup plan for which reels to check first.
Alternatives When The Paper Fails You
If the Press & Sun Bulletin does not contain the obituary you need, check the Binghamton Dispatch. It was a competing paper that merged editorial content with the Sun Bulletin at various points. Some obituaries from the overlapping publication periods appear in one paper and not the other. Cemetery records are another angle. The Obelisk Cemetery and Lakeview Cemetery in Binghamton both maintain interment records that cross-reference with newspaper obituaries. The cemetery associations have databases but they are not comprehensive. Grave markers themselves often contain birth and death dates that fill gaps left by missing or degraded newspaper records. The Broome County GenWeb project maintains a volunteer-run collection of transcribed obituaries. The quality is uneven because different volunteers transcribed different time periods, but it covers some years that are not easily accessible elsewhere. It is worth a quick search before committing to a physical archive visit.
The value of these records is real. A single obituary from the 1960s Press & Sun Bulletin can provide names of three generations of a family, the address of a home that no longer exists, and the name of a workplace that employed thousands of Binghamton residents. But the path to finding them is not straightforward. You need to know where to look, which tools to use, and where the gaps are. The records exist. They just do not make it easy to reach them.
