As of this writing, the Omaha Obits site contains close to 150,000 listings. Sometime this year (2009), we’ll go over the 200,000 mark. To celebrate that milestone, we’re having a contest, open to all those who submit an obituary order, to guess the exact date that we post the 200,000th listing on this site.

Here’s the contest rules: for every order you submit for an obituary, you may submit one guess as to the date we will post the 200,000th listing. (If you request more than one obituary per order, you still get only one guess for that order.)

The winner/winners will receive: a one year FREE membership to the Greater Omaha Genealogical Society and a free obit copy. IMPORTANT! Only obit orders that are submitted to the following address qualify for the contest: Greater Omaha Genealogical Society, PO Box 4011, Omaha, NE, 68104-4011. If you submit your order and guess to Omaha Public Library’s W. Dale Clark location, your obit request will still be processed, but your guess will not be entered in the contest (sorry, but we’re trying to keep the contest simple). In the event of multiple correct guesses, the first obit order received that contained the correct guess will be the declared winner. In the event that no one guesses the correct date, then the date closest to, but not beyond the actual date, will win.

Just a note and a little info about the occasional appearance of blank pages on this site: we think we’ve found and solved the problem. When this site was originally being built, website propaganda assured us that page length was unlimited. However, we’ve discovered there seems to be a limit after all. When a blank page appears after uploading a new batch of listings into it, dividing the listings across two pages instead of one, solves the problem. With that discovery (if it holds true), visitors to the site should now experience no more empty pages.

As compensation for whatever inconvenience you may have had to endure, we’ve decided to allow free, unlimited access to this site for the next 30 days. *…coughing spasms occurring…* Okay, okay…it’s always been free, but if we don’t make amends somehow, management will cut our monthly salary from four digits ($0,000.00) to two digits ($00.00). We know you understand and sympathize with our plight. Thank you. –the Omaha Obits staff

The 31 July 2008 upload includes extractions from the American Citizen newspaper. This is an Italian language newspaper, so any obits you order will be in Italian. We don’t provide a translation. The abbreviation for American Citizen will appear as AM CIT in the listings. There will be more obits from this source posted in the future.

…to also take a look at our “Additional Listings not from Newspapers” section (shown in the sidebar at right). Numbering over 1700 listings, these are comprised primarily of death listings from early Omaha City directories. 

For information on how to obtain copies of any obits listed in this index, click [here]. 

This site is maintained and updated several times per month (usually on weekends) by the Greater Omaha Genealogical Society.  

This is an index to obituaries and death notices in Omaha papers. We have included people whose item indicates that they may have lived within an hour to an hour and a half away from Omaha, but appeared in the Omaha newspapers. (The only exception is that we’ve added deaths of Civil War vets from anywhere in a larger area.)

This site is more than just an index of obituaries. The items indexed here run the gamut from a lengthy obituary, funeral story and extensive personal coverage to tiny one line “death certificate” notices. In all cases, we include them because it is often difficult to locate a time period for the death of a family member when doing genealogy if the date is not already in family records.

We have tried to include anything that indicates someone who died. If the name &/or location of the cemetery is included, we have added it. Hopefully you can use this index to add information to your family history. Some may have several different types of items in the paper.

Unless the person has two different spellings of the name given, the individual is probably going to only appear once in the index for each paper they appeared in. In the case of alternate spellings, we usually give both as they appear in the paper. There is no way that we can always be sure of correct spelling in the case of 100 year old newspapers, and some of the papers were poorly filmed or in very fine print being difficult to read. Indexers have done the best that they can with what is available.

Multiple papers will qualify an individual for multiple listings. Such listings may have an obit in the World Herald, the Omaha Bee, the Omaha Excelsior and the True Voice, for example. In that case, as the other papers are indexed, the individual will be given lines for each different paper. Sometimes the stories vary slightly in content, but not always.

Explanation of terms:

D/C: Death Certificate notice in early papers may be the only indication that there was a death. The only information they give is the name, age, and location of death.

LN: Lodge Notice is an invitation for members of a particular organization to attend the funeral of a member. It may not be an actual lodge in all cases, but any kind of organization is included. The organization may have kept information on its members.

COT: Card Of Thanks. COTs sometimes list more family members than does the original obituary in the paper. In some cases, a COT is the only thing that was found in the papers.

*: An astrisk indicates that there is more than one paper that an item appears in. Sometimes later editions give more complete information than the first time a name appears in the paper.

Unidentified man, woman or child: If a later story indicates that the individual was identified, the “unidentified” designation will be changed. Otherwise, it stands as we find it originally in the paper.

w/: widow. The spouse may be living, but may also have predeceased the subject.

Maiden names: are included when available.

Searching for a name:

Searching for a name on this site works the same as if you were searching for a name in a document on your word processing program. Brief instructions are below.

Click on the appropriate letter of the alphabet to the right. The link will take you to the page whose names begin with the letter you clicked on.

To search for a name, hold down your keyboard’s control key and press “F“. A small “Find” window will appear.

In the “Find“ window, type the last name of the person you are looking for, then click the window’s “Next” button.

You can continue clicking “Next” to cycle through every occurance of that name in the list.

Navigating the Index pages: 

To go to the bottom of a page, hold down the control key and press the “End” key.

To go to the top of a page, hold down the control key and press the “Home” key.

For quick scrolling up or down the name list, use the “Page Up” and “Page Down” keys.

For slower scrolling up or down the name list, use the arrow keys.