Obituaries

You may look for obituaries at several places on the Internet.

Local Newspaper - Courier-Times

The local newspaper for the Roxboro / Person County area is the Courier-Times. The paper is published on Wednesday and Saturday. The Wednesday issue is usually posted on the web site that day. The Saturday issue is sometimes not posted on the web site until the following Monday. The newspaper's web site typically has obituaries posted that extend back about six months.

Durham Newspaper - Herald-Sun

The newspaper in adjacent Durham, the Herald-Sun, publishes many Person County obituaries. This newspaper charges for all obituaries, so all deaths do not result in an obituary in the Herald-Sun. Access to the obituaries is free but registration is required. A significant advantage to searching for obituaries on the Hearld-Sun web site is that obituraries from 1998 to present are posted.

Funeral Homes

The largest of the Person County funeral homes is Brooks and White Funeral Home (907 Durham Rd, Roxboro, NC. 27573. Phone: 336-599-3171), a local business operating since 1914. Obituaries are posted on their web page. This is the most useful source for finding current obituaries as this web site is updated frequently.

Another funeral home is Cunningham & Nelson Funeral Home (608 S. Main St., Roxboro, NC 27573, Phone 336- 599-4075, email:[email protected]) Obituaries are posted HERE.

Yet another funeral home is Hester Whitted & Daye Funeral Home (603 S Main Street, Roxboro, NC 27573. Phone: 336-599-0104).

And one more local funeral home is Strickland Funeral Home (1314 N Main St, Roxboro, NC 27573. Phone: 336-599-2161).

Person County Message Board.

You will also find a number of Person County obituaries are posted on the RootsWeb Person County Message Board. The bulk of the obituaries that you will find there are recent and have been captured from the Courier-Times web pages as a result of that newspapers kind permission that they may be posted here. Other obituaries have been added by researchers from their files. Please be aware that these obituaries are to be used only for individual research and are not to be distributed for commercial purposes.

You can help! If you have copies of old obituaries, please share them. If the material is copyrighted, you can still post an abstract. If the process to post baffles you, send the information to me in an email and I will post it for you.

1. After you get to the message board page, find the "Advanced Search" link and follow it.
2. On the "Search Within" option select "Person Board"
3. On the "With Subject Containing" line, enter "OBIT"
4. On the "With Message Type" line, select "Obituary"

Using these options should restrict your search just to obituaries that have been posted from the Courier-Times.  Once you have tried a few searches, add this step:

• Add a surname entry in the "With Surname" field. Generally the surnames listed for each obituary include not only the deceased by also the surnames of inlaws, and parents.

The goal is to add all obituaries published in the Courier-Times from this day forward (January 2004)! In some cases there may be duplications when the same obituary runs more than once. The versions may or may not be identical. I would hope that with your help we will eventually be able to post many of the older obituaries also.

Please add other obituaries that you may have. Please be alert to set the various options so that things will work correctly when folks do searches. Here are the steps:

Go to the RootsWeb Person County Message Board page

1. Find the "Post New Message" link and follow it (click on it)
2. Add your name and email
3. Enter a subject in the form: "OBIT: John Smith d:28 Jan 2004"
4. Enter the obituary in the "message" space.
5. Unclick the "Send me an e-mail ..." option (unless you prefer otherwise)
6. In the "Classification" option, select "Obituary."
7. In the "Surnames" field, enter ALL of the surnames included in the obituary. (I include the deceased, surnames for parents if given and different, surnames for married daughters. I do not include surnames for the minister or pall bearers.)
8. Click the "Preview Message" button to be able to see how your post will look on the web page. After looking, you can change the post by clicking the "Edit Message" button.
9. Once you are happy with the message you can post it from either the "Preview" window or the original entry window by clicking the "Post Message" button. Should you make errors and not spot them until after you have completed the post, send me an email and I will delete the message and you can start over!

The Primitave Baptist Newsletter, Zion’s Landmark, which was published in Wilson, NC during the late 1800s and early 1900s is a source of much genealogical information. Obituaries that appeared in Zion's Landmark are available through the Tar River Collection Genealogical Society (TRC).

Reese Ferrell, a TRC member, has collected the obituaries and copies of the obituaries can be obtained from TRC.

An online alphabetical index of the people whose obituaries are contained in the collection is available on the TRC web pages. The index includes dob, dod, spouse, parents and date of publication where the information was originally published.

Contact information for the Tar River Connections - Genealogical Society:

Tar River Connections
PO Box 8764
Rocky Mount, NC 27804

email: [email protected]

From the TRC web page:
Preserving the history and genealogy of the North Carolina counties of Person, Vance, Granville, Franklin, Nash, Edgecombe, Pitt and Beaufort— Tar River Connections was formed in 1996 to work to "preserve the past for the future" in the northeastern North Carolina counties through which the Tar River flows.This area is known as the Tar River Basin.

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