Finding And Reading Russon Brothers Mortuary Obituaries Properly
I have spent a lot of time going through obituary records for people whose families used Russon Brothers Mortuary. Their Albany, Georgia location has been operating for decades, and the obituaries they publish are one of the more accessible public records you will find if you are trying to piece together genealogical information or confirm dates for someone who passed recently. The process is straightforward once you know where to look, but there are a few details that trip people up. The primary way to access their obituaries is through the Russon Brothers website at russonbrothers.com. There is an obituaries section, and it is searchable by last name, date of death, or first name. You can also filter by date range, which helps when you are looking for someone from a specific period rather than just the current listing page. I usually recommend using the date range filter because the default view tends to show the most recent ten to fifteen obits, and older ones sink below the fold pretty quickly. The obituaries themselves tend to follow a standard format that the funeral directors there have maintained for years. They typically include the full name, age, date of death, a brief biographical sketch, surviving family members, and service details. Some of the older entries go back quite far and are surprisingly detailed, which is useful for research purposes. What I have noticed over the years is that the biographical sections sometimes contain information not easily found elsewhere, like military service branches, union affiliations, or church memberships that might not appear in census records or Social Security files.
There is a specific issue that comes up fairly often. The website does not always index names correctly in its search function. If someone went by a nickname or had a middle name used as a first name, you might not find the obituary by searching the name as it appears on a birth certificate. I dealt with this when tracking down a great uncle whose legal name was William but who was known his entire life as Bill. Searching for William turned up nothing useful, but searching for Bill brought up the correct obituary within seconds. Another edge case involves married women who kept their professional names but were listed under their spouse's surname in the obituary. If you are researching a woman and her maiden name is not provided in the obituary title, you may need to try multiple surname variations. Sometimes the online obituary is just a summary, especially for entries published more than a few months ago. The full text may have been truncated or removed entirely. In those cases, I have found that calling the Albany office directly can be helpful. They keep physical copies and sometimes digital backups of the complete obituaries in their filing system. The staff is generally willing to look something up if you have the approximate date of death and the full name. You do not need to be a family member to ask, though they may verify basic details before sharing. I have called with just a last name and a year, and they were able to confirm whether an obituary existed and sometimes read back key details over the phone. The online archive is not comprehensive. Russon Brothers does not seem to maintain a complete digital history going back to their founding. Obituaries from the 1990s and earlier are mostly unavailable online, and there are gaps even in the 2000s. Some families opt for private services and request that no public obituary be published, so absence from the archive does not necessarily mean the person died during that period. Additionally, the website has been known to have minor formatting issues with older entries, where special characters in names get mangled and the search function fails to match them. If you hit a dead end online, the phone route remains the most reliable fallback.
If you are using these obituaries for genealogy work, I would suggest recording the information exactly as it appears, including any abbreviations or unusual spellings. The funeral home staff sometimes uses shorthand that can be misleading if you transcribe it loosely. Cross-reference the dates with the Social Security Death Index and local probate records when possible, since obituary dates can occasionally have typos. The service location and pastor information listed in the obituary can also lead you to church records or cemetery plots that would not otherwise be easy to locate. I usually note the funeral director's name when it appears, since that person may still be working and could provide additional context if you need to follow up later. If the person you are looking for may have used a different funeral home, the Albany Herald newspaper archives are worth checking. Russon Brothers has historically submitted obituary notices to the paper, and the newspaper's online archive sometimes retains entries that are no longer visible on the funeral home's website. The Georgia Department of Public Health also maintains death records, though access requires a legitimate research purpose and proper identification. For pre-1990 records, the Albany-McIntosh County Public Library local history section may have printed copies of funeral home publications or newspaper clippings organized by surname. The overall takeaway is that Russon Brothers obituaries are a genuinely useful resource for anyone researching local Albany area history or family connections. They are not perfect, and the digital record has clear gaps, but they fill in details that other sources often miss. Just be prepared to work around the search limitations and keep the phone number handy for when the website falls short.
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