Understanding What You Need To Know About Biggs Funeral Home Obituaries In Williamston Nc A Complete Guide
If you're trying to read or submit an obituary at Biggs Funeral Home in Williamston, North Carolina, the process is straightforward but there are a few details most people miss until they're already stuck on the phone. Biggs Funeral Home has been operating in Martin County for decades. They handle traditional funerals, cremation services, and memorial arrangements. Their obituaries appear on their website and are also syndicated to FuneralSoul.com, which is the platform they use for online memorial content. That matters more than it might sound at first, because the content lives in two places simultaneously and sometimes the details don't match exactly. The physical address is 117 South Main Street, Williamston, NC 27892. Their phone number runs (252) 534-5431. They accept calls for arranging services during normal business hours, though they do take emergency calls outside of those windows since deaths don't happen on a schedule.
When I was helping a client track down an obituary for an uncle who passed in 2019, I spent about twenty minutes on the phone before realizing the information had already migrated off the site and onto FuneralSoul. The original Biggs page had the basic service details but the longer, more detailed life summary was only on the third-party platform. This happens routinely with funeral homes that use syndication — the obituary gets split across two locations and families often don't realize they need to search both to find everything.
How to Find an Existing Obituary
Start at biggsfuneralhome.com and navigate to their obituaries section. Use the search function with the full name of the deceased. If you hit a dead end, go to FuneralSoul.com and search by the same name plus the city of Williamston or Martin County, NC. The FuneralSoul listing will typically have more biographical detail, including survived family members, service times, and memorials information. The Biggs site lists their own obituaries in reverse chronological order. Older entries sometimes get pulled after two to three years, which means if someone died in 2020 or earlier, it may already be gone from their direct site. FuneralSoul keeps them archived longer, so that's your backup. I found a great aunt's 2017 obituary this way after spending an hour on Biggs' site convinced it wasn't there anymore.
Get the Full Details
Submitting an Obituary
You can submit an obituary through Biggs Funeral Home in a couple of ways. The most direct method is calling their office and working with a director to draft the notice. They'll collect the standard information — full name, age, date of death, surviving family, service details, and any personalized content the family wants included. They also offer online submission forms through FuneralSoul. The online route is cheaper if you're handling everything privately without a full funeral service through them. A basic obituary submission through the online form typically runs between $100 and $200 depending on length and whether you want photos included. The phone submission through the funeral home itself usually costs more because it includes their time in drafting and reviewing, but the trade-off is you get professional help with the wording. Here's something nobody warns you about: Biggs Funeral Home requires pre-approval of obituary text before publication. They review for accuracy and tone. I learned this the hard way when a family friend tried to submit directly through the website and got rejected because they'd included a medical condition that Biggs considers too specific for a public notice. The fix was simple — I called the office, explained the situation, and had the director send over a revised draft. That took maybe fifteen minutes total.
What to Include in the Obituary
Standard obituary structure follows a predictable pattern, but getting the sequence right prevents edits later. Lead with the full legal name and age at death. Then the date and location of death. After that, biographical highlights — where they were born, education, military service, career, community involvement. Then list surviving immediate family and predeceased relatives. End with service details and preferred memorial donations. The most common mistake I see is families listing all fifty cousins and three in-laws. Funeral home editors will trim those lists down anyway. It's better to keep the family section to parents, siblings, spouse, children, and grandchildren unless there's a specific reason to include extended family. This usually cuts the revision back-and-forth to a single phone call instead of two or three.
Costs and Timing
Obituary publication through Biggs Funeral Home typically runs $150 to $350 depending on length and whether you choose print publication in addition to the online version. The Williamston Journal and Greenville News are the main print outlets they work with, and print placement adds another $75 to $200 on top of the base fee. Turnaround time is usually one to two business days from submission to publication if everything is in order. Rush fees apply if you need it published the same day, and that's a premium of roughly $50 to $100. I recommend submitting at least three days before the planned service to account for corrections and printing schedules. The last thing you want is the obituary going live an hour before visitation starts with a wrong phone number.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Misspelled names are the most frequent error. Make sure every person listed in the surviving family section has the correct spelling. A typo in a sibling's name can cause real friction. Double and triple-check the information before hitting submit. I once spent an hour tracking down why a family member was upset only to discover the deceased's middle name was hyphenated differently on the obituary than on their birth certificate. The funeral home corrected it, but it added a delay that stressed everyone involved. Another issue is outdated contact information. If you list a phone number for the funeral home, make sure it's the current one. Biggs changed their main line a few years ago and some older obituaries that still circulate on social media reference the old number. Don't let that happen with a new submission.
When Biggs Isn't the Right Choice
Biggs Funeral Home serves Williamston and the surrounding Martin County area. If you're trying to arrange services for someone who lived in Chowan County, Pitt County, or Bertie County, there are other options that might be closer and more convenient for out-of-town family. The funeral home market in eastern North Carolina is regional, and distance matters when guests need to travel. For purely informational purposes — looking up an obituary for genealogy or personal records — there's no reason to limit yourself to Biggs. The same records will be on FuneralSoul, Newspapers.com, and the digital archives of the Williamston Journal. Those sources sometimes have version differences worth comparing, especially for older notices where the funeral home may have edited the text before posting it to their own site versus what the newspaper originally ran.
Practical Next Steps
Call Biggs Funeral Home at (252) 534-5431 during business hours to discuss your needs. Have the basic facts ready — full name, date of death, service preferences, family member names for the listing. If you're just researching a past death, start with their website and then check FuneralSoul. Budget roughly $200 to $400 for a complete obituary with online and print placement. Allow three to five business days from draft to publication to avoid rushing. The whole process takes about an hour of your time if you have the information prepared. Most of the wait is on their end for review and publication scheduling, not on yours. Being organized upfront prevents the back-and-forth that slows everything down.
