The obituary indexes below were prepared by staff of the Akron-Summit County Public Library.  Additional years will be added as completed.  These indexes are in PDF format and viewing them requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.  If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer, you may download it at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html .

To browse the index for a particular year, click on that year below. You may search it after it opens by selecting “Find” from the Edit menu of Adobe Reader and typing the last name.

To request a copy of an obituary or to have additional years researched, contact us.

The Akron Beacon Journal Series housed in Special Collections dates from December 1840 to the present.  It is available on microfilm for most of that time and is available electronically from 1984 to the present through a subscription to NewsBank’s America’s Newspapers database. This database can be accessed from any library in the ASCPL system (or from any other library that subscribes to America’s Newspapers).

Special Collections has an obituary index to the Akron Beacon Journal from 1937-present, as well as a subject index for the years 1841-1939 (also available in microfilm and print) and 1985-present (online database).

Some Summit County newspapers have been digitized.  GenealogyBank.com includes the Summit County Beacon from 1877-1889.  While you need a personal subscription to read the complete articles online, you may search the database to identify articles that can then be found using our microfilm.  In addition, the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America project provides free access to many issues of the the Akron Daily Democrat from May 1, 1899-December 31, 1902.

The Barberton Public Library has obituary indexes to Barberton newspapers, please see the Local History Page of the Barberton Public Library for more information.