The Milan Public Library, in Washtenaw County, Michigan, has been saving obituary clippings from The Milan News-Leader and other local publications for many years. Library patrons Carl and Lillian Brown organized, bound and published some 3,500 obituaries dating back to the 1920s for researchers visiting the library’s genealogy department. But the Browns eventually passed away, and no one continued the project.
Last summer, the project was picked up and volunteers began organizing, indexing, copying, mounting, and finally the binding of about 6000 obituaries covering about 30 years. The result is eight more books of Milan-related obituaries to add to the nine previously published by the Browns.
The project is now finished and added to the genealogy department’s other resources.
Read the article about the Milan Obituary Project in the April 16, 2009 edition of the Milan News-Leader.
As a disclaimer, I work in the local history room of the Fremont Area District Library, Fremont Michigan.
We are working on compiling not just obituaries, but marriage announcements, births and anniversaries. We are also collecting some military records. Some of these go back to the late 1800’s. We have been printing of any announcements from the old microfilm and current editions of the local paper. We also get articles from old newspapers that have been donated to us. We enter the information from the articles into a database that is available on the Local History page of our library website. (http://fremontlibrary.net/) Then we place these copies in notebooks available to our patrons. If someone finds an announcement online, they only need to request a copy and for a donation, we are happy to mail it out to them.
We also have recorded engagements and divorces clippings, although they are not on the database.
The clippings can be as simple as a mention in one of the old time community gossip columns. (Sam Smith motored to Grand Rapids Saturday for the marriage of his nephew Joe Smith) Or it can be a long and discriptive, sometimes gory, front page article discribing a young mother’s death in the 1920’s by being kicked by a cow.
Our collection of notebooks now take up over 10 four foot shelves.