February 24, 2002

7:08 PM

The National Obituary Archive is filled with details and biographies about those who left this life recently and tragically, the famous and infamous, and even one or two notes about just plain folks.
posted by bradlands (5 comments total)

What a great post, bradlands. I sure missed this one about John Thaw this week.
posted by bjgeiger at 7:33 PM on February 24, 2002

Brad: belatedly, my condolences.
posted by rodii at 8:15 PM on February 24, 2002

If the person isn't in the National Obituary Archive, you can try the Social Security Death Index at two sites: (1), (2). It has 67 million records, so if the person isn't there, they may still be alive.
posted by sheauga at 8:28 PM on February 24, 2002

Um, i was just going to post actually that it seems the NOA is just taking half their records directly from the SSDI. That's all the "just plain folks" link is. With LESS info than the SSDI gives you. (no SSN). Lame.

The Rootsweb SSDI is generally the best, btw.
posted by benh57 at 11:35 PM on February 24, 2002

When using SSDI, just be aware that there may be as much as a 6 month lag between a person's passing and the index showing a positive match. It was 4 months after my Grandma died before her entry on SSDI was posted. (I use sites like this both in my job and at home for family tree information.)
posted by onhazier at 9:39 AM on February 25, 2002