The Problem With Obituaries

© Kathy Duncan, 2019

The problem with obituaries is that they are often hard to find. The advent of digitalized newspapers is making the search for obituaries easier, but often even after a newspaper is located in the right timeframe and location, there still is no obituary to be found. Why?

The answer is simple: money. Obituaries are expensive to publish today, and they were expensive in our ancestors' time. Almost all newspapers, from an early time on, charged a fee for publishing obituaries.

I searched Texas newspapers beginning in 1850 and went forward into the 20th century, looking at their requirements for publishing obituaries. Along the way, I found some interesting attitudes expressed by editors toward obituaries.

The Brenham Enquirer treated obituaries the same as advertisements if they exceeded ten lines. Evidently, obituaries under that might have been free. This is exceedingly generous for the time. Advertisements were charged one dollar per square of ten lines. One dollar in 1854 was equal to $29.97 in 2019. Many people living in Texas at that time had little cash money on hand. They lived off the land and bartered. Money only came to hand when their harvest or another commodity was sold. Those proceeds were used to pay property taxes, poll taxes, and purchase essentials that were not produced by the family. These essentials included shoes, fabric, etc. This situation did not change much for the next hundred years.

Evidently, up until 1858, The Colorado Citizen had either been publishing obituaries for free or publishing them on credit. This notice announced their discontinuation of that practice.

In 1877, The Galveston Daily News ran a notice from The Bonham News that expressed the editor's disdain for long obituaries. The editor's feeling was that obituaries appealed only to the deceased's  small circle of friends and that they made the newspaper "less interesting to the mass of readers." Because this could lead to a loss of revenue, the editor required payment for all obituaries and tributes of respect.

By 1879, The Galveston Daily News reported that The Longview New Era was charging a rate of ten cents a line because printing free obituaries did not "buy bread for our family or pay printers."

The charge for obituaries varied widely over the years. In 1883, The Albany Star was charging fifty cents per square in advance. In 1883 fifty cents was approximately $12.46 by 2019 standards. This is more than ten dollars less than what The Brenham Enquirer was charging 20 years before.

Four years later, The Christian Messenger in Bonham, Texas was charging $2.50 for obituaries exceeding ten lines. That $2.50 is equivalent to about $66.24 today. The submitter would have been highly motivated to keep their obituary to less than ten lines.

By contrast, in 1889, The Cass County Sun of Linden, Texas was charging a flat rate of five cents a line. Five cents a line would have been equivalent to $1.37 a line today.

In 1891, the competition, The Linden Alliance Standard of Linden, Texas, was charging five cents a line for all over ten lines, which suggests that obituaries of under ten lines were free.

In 1894, The Daily Hesperian announced its intent to charge five cents a line for obituaries. Otherwise, they ran the risk of having "no room for anything else if it accepted such matter" for free.

The Forney Messenger apparently waited until 1902 to start charging five cents a line for obituaries.

In 1905, The Palestine Daily Herald was also charging five cents per line, but a line was limited to six words. To put that in perspective, you could buy a loaf of bread or a pound of sugar for five cents in 1905.

In 1910, The Sulpher Springs Gazette was charging 1 to 2 cents per word for each word over 250 words while 250 words or less were inserted for free.

In 1912, The Clarksville Times, the paper that would have published my family member's obituaries was charging advertising rates for obituaries. Couple this with the fact that the "oldest business institution in Red River County" destroyed its own early newspapers (before about 1940ish) in a fit of cleaning, and the result is a disaster for researchers. 

In 1949, even The Bogata News in tiny Bogata, Texas, was charging regular advertising rates for obituaries. 

So what is a researcher to do? Consider researching the going rate for obituaries that were charged by your ancestor's local newspaper within the timeframe of your ancestor's death. The charges seem to have fluctuated wildly, but in most instances, there were fees for your ancestor to pay. Take into consideration the income level of your ancestor's family. That will give you some insight into why your ancestor may not have an obituary. The easiest way to find this information is to use the keyword combination: obituaries tributes. Or perhaps use the combination: obituaries resolutions. 

This is why each obituary is such a precious find. Happy hunting.