Obituary Research Information

The St. Petersburg Library System provides a fee-based copying and research service for patrons unable to come to the library. Library staff or trained volunteers will search for a maximum of three obituaries per patron at any one time appearing in early editions of either the St. Petersburg Times or the Evening Independent.

Requests must include the full name and death date of the deceased.
Fees are payable in advance.
The fee for each obituary search is $15.00. This fee includes postage and one copy per request. Additional pages or copies are $1.00 per page.
Checks or money orders made out to the St. Petersburg Library System will be accepted as payment.
Library staff or trained volunteers will search for up to two weeks beyond the given death date(s).
Complete contact information in the form of either a mailing address or email address must be provided by the requestor. Once we have received a fee, we can send a response via regular mail or email (we have scanning capability).

Not all research is successful. It is possible that the information you are seeking may not be available. Research fees are not refundable. Due to the volume of research requests, please allow ten working days for our response.

The St. Petersburg Library System provides patrons with access to the St. Petersburg Times historical newspaper online archive.

With a St. Petersburg Library card, you can research an online archive of the Tampa Bay Times free of charge here. This historical newspaper archive provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable coverage of politics, society and events from 1901-2009.

Requests and fees may be sent to the following mailing address:
Correspondence and Research Desk
St. Petersburg Library System/ Main Library
3745 Ninth Avenue North
St. Petersburg, FL 33713
(727) 893-7928

Referrals

If you are unsure of the exact date of death, you may find that date by searching the Social Security Death Index or the Florida Death Index on Ancestry.com in your local library.
If you need information/certificates regarding Florida births, deaths, or marriages, you may want to contact:

Florida Office of Vital Statistics
P.O. Box 210
Jacksonville, FL 32231-0042

Or visit the Website at http://www.floridahealth.gov/certificates/certificates/