Chronicling America

The National Archives has available on-line digitized images of may newspapers from across the country. In cooperation with the Oklahoma Historical Society, several Oklahoma newspapers were included in the project. I have searched some of these papers for pre-1920 deaths. Papers searched so far are from Anadarko, Beaver and Durant. Today I added 325 deaths recorded in The Farmers' Champion of Elgin, Comanche Co. OK.

These newspaper images will be invaluable to researchers. So much history AND genealogy is recorded in their pages. Currently I am extracting deaths from the Cheyenne Transporter of Darlington IT. This paper was published at the Cheyenne/Arapahoe Agency at Darlington, north of Fort Reno in what is now Canadian County. The time period of 25 Aug 1880 to 12 Aug 1886 is covered. I have found 50 "Oklahoma" deaths in the first two years of the paper.

Of course I have to do several searches. Key words I search by include died, death, burial, cemetery, obituary, along with several others. This is a very slow process, what with multiple searches, checking for duplicates, and slow loading pages. So my progress will slow down on additions to the database.



I am currently working on these sources:

• The Cheyenne Transporter of Darlington IT 1882-1886
• Choctaw County Obituaries from the Choctaw County OK Genweb
• Cemetery Records of Okmulgee County OK ©1974 v1&2
• The Beaver Herald of Beaver OK 1895-1919
• Sexton's records of Fairlawn Cemetery in Oklahoma City OK

Daily Oklahoman Obituaries

I just finished entering and importing 3672 obituaries, death notices, cards of thanks, murder accounts, etc. from the Daily Oklahoman covering the period 1910 through 1919. I realize this is far from all deaths reported from around Oklahoma in the Daily Oklahoman during that time period, but it is definitely a good start.

I made searches initially on the word "obituary". Then I searched on "card of thanks", "vital statistics", "suicide", and a couple of other possibities. Later I will check for other key words. But currently I am working on the Daily Oklahoman's first nine years: 1901-1909.

So if you are looking for someone who died in the Oklahoma City area, there's a good chance I have that person in my database. I have all known tombstone inscriptions for the county, obits/death notices for the main newspaper in OKC, probate index entries for through 1907, and miscellaneous records I have come across.

Future searches will include the following:

• OKC Health Department Death Index (at OHS)
• Fairlawn Cemetery sexton's records
• Church records
• Funeral Home records
• Other cemetery sexton's recpords

I've also been searching through on-line newspaper archives through the Chronicling America website. So far I've added info from newspapers in Anadarko, Durant and Vinita. It's exciting to be finding so many records. I only wish I had more time!