The Hayes Ohio Obituary Index

In a recent Bloggers Day article I bulleted Ancestry.com’s intent to publish the Hayes Center Ohio Death Index. Now that Ancestry.com has published that database, orders for obituary copies from the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center have quadrupled over last year, according to the Port Clinton News Herald. Orders now come in from across the nation and all over the world.

Raising the awareness of a database is one reason I’ve never had a problem with Ancestry.com including free databases in its subscription content. This has been a definite win-win situation for Ancestry.com, the Hayes Center, and in my opinion, Ancestry.com subscribers.

The Ohio Obituary Index contains over 1.5 million entries from as far back as the 1810s right up to the present. You can access the database for free at the Hayes website. Go to rbhayes.org/index . Search options are pictured above left. (Click on the image to see the original full size.)

But even if you’re not an Ancestry.com subscriber, you can tap into the more powerful Ancestry.com search index. On Ancestry.com go to the database and you will see the search options shown to the right. (Click for original.)

However, as a non-subscriber, to see all the details of a search result, you must click the link (pictured below) to the Hayes Center website.