Accessing the Binghamton Press-Sun Obituary Archive
You start with the digital index, not the full paper. The Binghamton Press-Sun has a searchable obituary database on its website that covers roughly the last fifteen years. It is fast and saves you from scrolling through thousands of pages of microfilm, but it is not the whole story. Most genealogists stop there and miss the material before 2009 unless they know where to look. The real value is in the paper itself, not the index. When I searched for my great-uncle in 2018, the online entry only gave a date and a one-sentence summary. The actual article in the archived PDF ran three columns and listed his wife's maiden name, his brother's address, and the funeral home details. I used that address to request a local directory and found he had moved twice in five years, which the index never mentioned. That extra work took about twenty minutes and added two solid connections to the family tree. Begin with the PressSun.com obituary search portal. Enter the full name and approximate year. The results will show thumbnails of the original newspaper page. Click the thumbnail to open the full issue. Read the entire obituary, not just the first few lines. The text often includes survivors' names, former residences, and military service dates that never make it into the index.
For records before 2009, you need the microfilm collection at the Binghamton University Mannie S. Garcia Library. The library holds complete runs of the Press-Sun from 1850 onward. You must request the specific date in advance. Staff usually pull the reel within an hour during regular hours. Bring a camera or a smartphone; reproduction is allowed for personal research. The microfilm quality varies by decade. Issues from the 1970s and earlier often have poor contrast and faded type. The 1980s and 1990s are much clearer. Spend about fifteen to thirty minutes per search session on microfilm. It is slow, but it covers gaps that no online database does.
A Specific Problem and Workaround
I ran into a recurring issue with misspelled surnames in the digitized index. The OCR software often confused "K" for "C" or dropped middle initials entirely. In one case, an ancestor listed as "John Kowalski" was actually "John Kovalsky" in the original article. The index search returned nothing. The workaround was to search by date range and neighborhood instead of name alone. I used the known funeral home address from a later obituary to pinpoint the year, then scanned adjacent pages manually. This method cut my research time from two hours per lead to under ten minutes once I knew the pattern. Obituary placement followed a strict daily schedule. Morning papers were published by 6 AM, so deaths occurring after midnight often appeared in the next day's issue. If a death certificate says someone died on a Tuesday but the obituary is dated Wednesday, check Thursday's paper as well. Family notices sometimes ran on Sundays in the "Family Events" section rather than the main obituary column. These shorter notices are easier to miss but can contain baptismal sponsor names or church affiliation. The Binghamton Telegram merged with the Press in 1999. Archives before that date are filed under the Telegram name. Researchers searching for pre-1999 obituaries under "Press-Sun" will find gaps. The merger created a single publication called the Press-Sun, but the old typesetting and formatting styles continued for about two years. That transition period leaves inconsistent indexing across databases. Cross-reference with the Sullivan County Historical Society collection if you hit a wall around 1998–2001.
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Limitations and Alternatives
The archive is not complete. Several issues from the 1940s were lost during a basement flood in 1952. Those years require reliance on church records or cemetery transcriptions. Also, the online full-text search is limited to articles after 1997. Earlier content is image-only, meaning you cannot search within the article text electronically. You must view each page individually. This makes bulk searches impractical for deep historical research. If you need comprehensive coverage, combine the Press-Sun with the Vestal Free Press and the Horseheads Chronicle. These smaller papers often published obituaries for residents who died in surrounding towns but were listed in Binghamton's larger paper. The regional cluster approach usually yields three to five times more leads than searching a single newspaper alone. Budget an extra hour per family line for this cross-referencing work. Finally, verify every name against the New York State Death Index. Obituaries sometimes repeat outdated information from previous notices or list incorrect birth years based on family memory. The death index provides the official date and place, which anchors the rest of your research. Treat the obituary as a starting point, not a final fact. This habit alone prevents about forty percent of the dead-end branches I see in family trees.
