The Tampa area is composed of two counties Pinellas and Hillsborough. The major communities are Tampa and ST. Petersburg. Your relatives's obituary may have been placed in the newspaper of either community or any of the dozen or so smaller communities in the two counties or the out lying counties and their communities. Florida did not keep death certificates state wide until 1917. They have been indexed and are available on line at a fee site, and major Florida libraries.
Obituaries for Tampa and
some surrounding areas may be researched in a number of ways,
depending on the year of death:
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FROM 1855 - 1987: There is an obituary index included in our Tampa History Index, otherwise known as TRAILS. TRAILS includes obituary citations for the Tampa Tribune for folks who have died in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Polk, Manatee and Hardee counties. Records prior to 1895 are not complete. As of November 2006, TRAILS includes obituary citations through the year 1987. Volunteers continue to index this database. Searching in TRAILS is most effective by typing the person's last name and year of death. Customers unable to visit the library in person (to include those who are NON RESIDENTS of Hillsborough County) may make requests for photocopies from the microfilm archives via their own local library system's Inter-Library Loan Department. Another option is to contact a Professional Researcher in the Tampa Bay area to perform the lookup.
-FROM 1984-1999: There are print indexes for obituary citations appearing in the Tampa Tribune for these years. The print resources is titled, "Local Obituary & Funeral Notices Published in the Tampa Tribune," produced by the Florida Genealogical Society. These are available in the History & Genealogy Department and the second floor of the East building of the John F. Germany Public Library. As with older obituary citations , customers unable to visit the John F. Germany Library in person to use the microfilm archives may make requests for photocopies from the archives for these years via their own local library system's Inter-Library Loan Department. Another option is to contact a Professional Researcher in the Tampa Bay area to perform the lookup. -
Customers who CAN visit the John F. Germany Library are take their TRAILS citation and use the microfilm archives. The archives are located on the second floor of the East building, in the John F. Germany Public Library in downtown Tampa. The University of South Florida Library (Tampa Campus Library) also provides access to the Tampa Tribune microfilm archives. The contact number for the USF Library is 974-2881.
FROM 1987 - PRESENT: Obituaries from the Tampa Bay area may be listed in the St. Petersburg Times. Their online, searchable site is found here: http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/. The Newsbank edition of this same database is available through the library's Information Gateway.
FROM 1990 - PRESENT: A Tampa Tribune archive is available online on their Internet site at http://archive.tampatrib.com. The Tampa Tribune charges $2.95 per article retrieval from their Internet site. This same database -- full text of Tampa Tribune articles and obituaries from 1990 on -- is available through Newsbank in the library's Information Gateway.