Researching Meriden's Obituary Archive
The Meriden Record has been publishing local news for decades, and their obituary section is one of the better preserved collections in the area. If you are trying to track down information on someone from Meriden, Connecticut, starting with the newspaper archive is usually the right first move. The problem is that the digital archive is not perfectly indexed, and you can waste a lot of time clicking through pages that do not exist anymore. My most common workflow is to use the Library of Congress Chronicling America database first, then cross-reference with the Connecticut State Library's historical newspaper collection. I usually find about sixty percent of what I need there before I even think about going to the Meriden Public Library downtown. When Chronicling America has a gap, which it often does for the 1970s and later, that is when the physical archive becomes necessary.
Unveiling The Faces Of Meridens Past A Journey Through The Meriden Record Obituaries
Accessing the full Meriden Record obituary collection requires a few steps that are not obvious unless you have done this before. You can start at the Meriden Public Library website, but the digital microfilm viewer they link to tends to be glitchy. I recommend calling the reference desk directly and asking for the microfilm reel numbers for the years you need. The staff usually has a printed index that is far more useful than whatever search tool they put online. The obituary index covers roughly 1965 to the present in bound volumes, and those volumes are on the second floor in the local history room. One thing most people miss is that the Meriden Record merged with the Daily Record at various points over the years. If you are searching for obituaries from before 1980, you might need to look under both titles because the paper changed hands and name formats several times. I spent an afternoon once looking for an obituary that turned out to be filed under Daily Record instead. The index at the library does note the title changes, but only if you know to check the marginalia. For more recent obituaries, the Meriden Record website does have an archive section, but it only goes back to about 2005 and even that coverage is spotty. Many obituaries from the early twenty-tens are missing from the online version entirely. The print edition had different content standards back then, so some local obituaries ran in the paper but were never uploaded to the site. If you need something from that period, the microfilm at the library is your only reliable option.
The best specific tip I can offer is about the death notices versus the full obituaries. The Meriden Record published two distinct formats. Death notices were short, usually two or three lines, placed by funeral homes. Full obituaries were longer and often written by family members or clergy. If you only need basic dates and funeral home information, the death notices are faster to scan. But the real biographical detail, military service, survived-by lists, career information, those are all in the full obituaries. I always pull both because the death notice sometimes has a phone number for the family or a specific donation request that the longer piece omits. If you are doing serious genealogical work, I would also grab the cemetery records from the same period. The Meriden Record often mentions which cemetery the person was buried at, and that saves you a separate lookup. Places like Evergreen Cemetery, Grove Street Cemetery, and Saint Joseph's Cemetery all have recorded interment information that matches up with the newspaper records. I keep a simple spreadsheet linking each obituary finding to a cemetery record, and it cuts my verification time roughly in half compared to searching each source separately. There are limitations you should know about. The Meriden Record did not always publish obituaries for people who died outside the city, even if their families lived here. Military personnel who died in service but were from Meriden sometimes only got a brief notice. And before the mid-nineteen-sixties, the paper was much less consistent about death coverage overall. If you are searching for pre-1960 records, you will likely need to branch out to the Hartford Courant archives or the Connecticut State Library's newspaper databases, which sometimes picked up Meriden deaths that the local paper missed.
Get the Full Details
For anyone just getting started, I would suggest downloading the genealogy research log template from the Connecticut Genealogical Society website and adapting it for newspaper research. You do not need fancy software. A printed calendar with dates marked where you searched, which reels you checked, and what you found works fine. I still use paper because it forces me to slow down and actually read each entry instead of skimming search results. The Meriden Record obituaries contain real information, but only if you take the time to read past the standard boilerplate language that funeral homes insist on including.
