Navigating the Post Tribune Obituary Collection
The Post Tribune archives are one of those genealogy resources that look straightforward on paper and turn out to be a maze once you actually start searching. If you are trying to pull obituaries from their published collection, you need to understand how the material is organized and where the gaps actually sit. I spent about six months cross-referencing these records for a family research project and learned exactly where the frustration points are. Before you even start clicking through databases, you need to know that the Post Tribune served the Hammond and Crown Point areas of Lake County, Indiana. That geographic scope matters because it determines which collections hold the most complete coverage. The papers ran obituaries daily, but the formatting changed several times over the decades, which affects how searchable the text actually is. The main access point is through the Lake County Public Library digital archive and various subscription platforms like Ancestry and Newspapers.com. Each has different coverage periods. The library system tends to have better scan quality for older issues, while the subscription sites often have fuller OCR text that actually works for search terms. I found that relying on just one platform leaves holes in your results, usually around the 1980s to early 2000s where the microfilm scans are grainy but the text database is incomplete.
What You Actually Find in These Records
A standard Post Tribune obituary from the 1970s onward typically includes the deceased name, age, surviving family members, service details, and sometimes the funeral home. Earlier records, especially before the 1950s, are much spottier. Some entries are just a single line mentioning a death with no biographical content. Others are full multi-paragraph pieces with detailed life histories. The real value comes from the surviving relatives list. That is where you get sibling names, spouses, children, and sometimes parents listed. These connections are gold for building family trees, but you need to parse them carefully. The conventions shifted over time. In the 1960s and earlier, it was common to list only sons and grandsons, leaving daughters and granddaughters out of the printed record entirely. A woman might appear in a later obituary as a survivor while her own name never appeared in an earlier family listing. One thing people miss is the predeceased relatives section. That part often lists parents, siblings, and sometimes grandparents who died before the featured person. It is easy to scroll past when reading for the survivors, but that predeceased section can fill in entire branches of a family tree that you had no other source for.
Common Search Problems and How to Handle Them
OCR failure is the biggest issue you will hit. Many of the older Post Tribune scans have text recognition that completely misses or mangles certain names, especially those with uncommon spellings or non-English origins. I ran into this with a great-uncle whose surname kept coming back as a different spelling in the database. The actual obituary was there but the search tool was reading his name as something else entirely. The workaround was to search by the known date range and then manually browse the pages rather than relying on the search function. I set up a daily range of about ten pages and scanned through them rather than trusting the indexed results, which saved me from missing at least three obituaries. Another problem is the duplicate entries. The Post Tribune sometimes ran the same obituary in both the print edition and a separate family contributions section, and digitization projects often capture both versions. This creates two record entries for the same document, and they may have slightly different metadata. When you see two listings for the same person around the same date, check both because one might have a more complete scan or include a picture that the other lacks. Date range searching is another area where the platforms underperform. You cannot always trust the date attached to a record. Some scans were uploaded out of order, and the date metadata sometimes reflects the digitization date rather than the actual publication date. I learned to verify dates by checking the issue header on the first page of the scan, which took maybe thirty seconds per record but prevented several wrong connections in my research.
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Advanced Details Most People Skip
The military service notations in these obituaries carry useful information that goes beyond a simple veteran mention. Some entries include the branch, rank, and specific conflicts served in. During the period from the 1950s through the 1980s, the level of detail varied significantly, with Korean War and World War II era veterans sometimes receiving fuller service listings while more recent conflicts got shorter mentions. If you are trying to confirm military service for a relative, these obituary notes can provide leads for further research even when they are incomplete. Occupation listings are another detail worth tracking. The Post Tribune often included the deceased person's employer or retired occupation, which can help establish timelines and verify identity when multiple people share the same name in the same area. I found a case where two men with the same name and similar ages appeared in the same decade, and their listed occupations made it clear which obituary belonged to which person. That distinction would have been nearly impossible to make from the name alone. Cemetery information is another section that varies in reliability. Some obituaries name the exact cemetery and even the section or lot number. Others just mention a county or general area. The funeral home name is consistently listed and can be useful because certain funeral homes served specific neighborhoods, giving you another geographic anchor for your research.
Where the Collection Falls Short
The Post Tribune obituary archive has significant gaps, especially for the years before 1940. Coverage is uneven and some issues are simply missing from the digitized collection. If you are researching ancestors who died in that earlier period, you will likely need to supplement with other sources like the Chicago Daily Tribune archives, local church records, or cemetery databases for the Lake County area. No amount of digging in the Post Tribune collection will fill those missing years. Another limitation is that the digitized versions do not always include the full page context. Related items like death announcements, memorial cards, and even some notices of service details may appear on adjacent pages or in sections that are not consistently captured in the same digital sequence. This means you might find an obituary reference without the actual announcement, or vice versa. For the most reliable results, I recommend combining the Post Tribune archive with the Indiana State Library's digital newspaper collection and checking with the Hammond Public Library's local history department. They sometimes have physical copies or notes that address gaps in the online database. The physical archives are not digitized in full, so a visit or a reference request can uncover obituaries that the online search will never return.
