Question

Where is the best place to look for obits online in New Mexico sometime in the 1980's?

Answer 1

Welcome, James!  Try the website for the newspaper where the person lived, or legacy.com.

Answer 2

As Herbert mentioned some newspapers have archives of their obits online. Genealogybank is a pay site which has a decent recent archive but a terrible search engine. Some of us here have accounts there and can do look ups if you have specifics.

You can also try the local historical society or county genealogy website. For those, you might have to make a phone call because they might have hard copies that aren't digitized yet.

The 80's are a little far back to try funeral homes but if it's for one specific person it's a worth a try.

Comments

Dina, can I piggyback off this comment to ask for a lookup for historical obituaries with the McFatter/McPhatter/McFater surname in the USA? Say, pre-1870.

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1870?  You'll definitely have to contact libraries or historical societies in the area in which they lived--and usual this entails reviewing microfiche.

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Jessica, I see that your McFatters are in Louisana and Mississippi, a search at GenealogyBank pulled 35 hits for those states plus North Carolina McFatters (pre 1880) but none of them are death notices or obits. (Though you can find death notices in that range from time to time in the newspapers.)

Again the search engine at GenealogyBank is poor, though they are improving the site continually. Example: I have someone named "Royal White" who married into my family. To find anything related to him pulled up hundreds of clothing ads,  and there was no way to exclude them from the search.

Answer 3

At least in Colorado, you can go get a library card which gives you access to their newspaper database and you can search the obits from there from your house.

Answer 4

Where in New Mexico are you needing to look?

Answer 5

Sometimes obits will come up with an internet search from third party collectors, or pay service like newspapers.com, that you may be able to read. Newspapers.com has text recognition transcriptions, but does not always come out clear.

Most recent papers may be subscription service as they are still under copyright, but the U.S. Library of Congress has a program to digitize American newspapers and has hundreds of digitized copies from the 1700’s to the 1960’s:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/