Losing someone is heavy. Then comes the paperwork, the announcements, and the sudden, urgent need to find a specific date or a burial location from three decades ago. If you’re hunting for obituaries in Luzerne County PA, you probably realized pretty quickly that it’s not just one big digital filing cabinet. It is a messy, sprawling network of newspaper archives, funeral home websites, and courthouse basement records.
Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton aren’t exactly small towns, but they function on old-school connections.
If you grew up in the Wyoming Valley, you know the Citizens' Voice and the Times Leader are the two giants in the room. They’ve been at it for ages. But here’s the thing: a lot of people assume every death in the county gets a full write-up in both. That isn't how it works. Families often pick one based on where they lived or which paper their parents subscribed to for forty years. Sometimes, if money was tight, they didn't run a formal obituary at all, opting instead for a "Death Notice," which is basically a two-line confirmation that someone passed.
Finding these records requires knowing exactly where to dig.
The Reality of Searching Obituaries in Luzerne County PA Today
The internet changed everything, but it also kind of broke the traditional way we track local history. Back in the day, you’d just flip through the physical pages of the Hazleton Standard-Speaker. Now? You’re dealing with paywalls, broken links, and third-party sites like Legacy or Ancestry that sometimes get the dates wrong.
Honestly, if you are looking for something recent—say within the last five to ten years—your best bet isn't even the newspaper. It's the funeral home.
Luzerne County has a very specific "funeral home culture." Families in Pittston, Nanticoke, and Kingston tend to stay loyal to the same directors for generations. Establishments like Kniffen O'Malley Leffler or Desiderio-Lehman maintain their own digital archives. These are usually free to access. They often contain the full, unedited tribute, the guestbook, and even video montages that the newspapers would never have the space to host.
But what happens when the trail goes cold?
Maybe you're doing genealogy. Maybe you’re trying to settle an estate. You need a record from 1974. You aren't going to find that on a funeral home’s WordPress site. You have to go to the source. The Luzerne County Historical Society, located right on South Franklin Street in Wilkes-Barre, is basically the "final boss" of local research. They have microfilmed records that go back to the 1700s.
👉 See also: What Does Euphoric Mean? Why It’s More Than Just Feeling Happy
Why the Newspaper Archives Can Be a Headache
You’d think the Times Leader would have a simple search bar for every person who ever lived in Wilkes-Barre. They don’t. Most of their digital archives only go back to the mid-90s or early 2000s.
If you need something older, you’re looking at a subscription to a service like Newspapers.com or a trip to the Osterhout Free Library. The Osterhout is a gem. It’s an old church-turned-library with a massive collection of local history. The librarians there have seen every struggle imaginable when it comes to tracking down an elusive obituary in Luzerne County PA. They know the quirks of the old "Evening News" or the "Wilkes-Barre Record" (which merged into the papers we know today).
Keep in mind that spelling is your enemy here.
Luzerne County is famous for its complex ethnic surnames—Polish, Slovak, Italian, Welsh. A "Kowalczyk" might be spelled three different ways depending on which clerk was typing that day. If your search isn't hitting, try wildcards. Use just the first few letters of the last name. It sounds tedious because it is.
Beyond the Name: What These Records Actually Tell Us
An obituary isn't just a death announcement. In this part of Pennsylvania, it’s a social map.
You’ll see mentions of the "Coal Breakers," the local VFW posts, or specific parishes like St. Nicholas or St. Robert Bellarmine. These details are vital. If an obituary says someone was buried from a specific church, that church might have sacramental records that include even more info than the obituary itself, like godparents or the cause of death in some older Latin records.
Social shifts show up in these archives too.
In the 50s and 60s, obituaries here were formal. Very "Standard English." By the 80s, you start seeing more personality—mentions of favorite sports teams (usually the Phillies or the Steelers, though the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins get a lot of love now) and specific hobbies.
👉 See also: Why Men's Vanilla Scented Cologne Is Finally Losing Its "Cupcake" Reputation
Dealing with the "Private" Family
Sometimes, you’ll search and search and find nothing. This is becoming more common.
With the rising cost of print media, many families in Luzerne County are choosing not to publish in the Citizens' Voice. A full obituary can cost hundreds of dollars. Instead, they might just post on social media. This creates a "black hole" for future historians. If you can't find a record, check the Social Security Death Index (SSDI). It won't give you the flowery language about how much they loved gardening, but it will confirm the date of death and the last known residence, which is often enough to request a formal death certificate from the Pennsylvania Department of Health in New Castle.
Practical Steps for a Successful Search
Don't just Google a name and hope for the best. You'll get ten million results for people with the same name in Ohio or California. You have to be surgical.
- Start with the Funeral Home: If the death was in the last 15 years, search the person's name + the town + "funeral home."
- The Library Microfilm Strategy: For anything pre-1990, go to the Osterhout Free Library or the Hoyt Library in Kingston. They have the machines. They have the film. It’s the only way to see the original layout.
- The Historical Society: If you're stuck, pay the small fee for the Luzerne County Historical Society to do a look-up. They have indexes that aren't online anywhere else.
- Check the Surrogate's Office: If you need proof of death for legal reasons and there's no obit, the Luzerne County Register of Wills at the courthouse will have probate records if an estate was opened.
The process is rarely a straight line. It's more like a puzzle where half the pieces are under the sofa and the other half are in someone's attic. But in a place with as much history as the Wyoming Valley, the records are usually there—you just have to know which door to knock on.
Start by narrowing down the decade. If you know the year, the microfilm at the Osterhout is your best friend. If it’s recent, hit the local funeral home sites first. Most importantly, don't trust a single source; cross-reference the newspaper date with the cemetery marker if you can. It’s the only way to be 100% sure you’ve found the right person in a county where there are a thousand people named John Murphy.
👉 See also: Different Types of Wraps: Why Your Lunch Strategy Is Probably Stuck in the 90s
Actionable Next Steps:
- Identify the exact year of death to determine if you need digital archives (post-2005) or microfilm (pre-2000).
- Search the "Luzerne County, Pennsylvania Genealogy" groups on social media; local volunteers often do look-ups for free.
- Contact the Luzerne County Historical Society via their website to request a formal search of their private indexes if the public databases fail.