After years of collecting cemetery and obituary information, Fort Bend County Libraries’ Local History and Genealogy Department is launching an online obituary database that will provide Internet access for people searching for family history information in Fort Bend County from anywhere in the world.
The obituary database includes the information that has been collected and converted into a digital format, making it available on the Internet as an online, searchable database.
ONLINE OBITUARY DATABASE – Library genealogy staff member Bettegene Coyle looks through the print version of the “Registry of Cemeteries in Fort Bend County, Texas,” while Department Manager Daniel Sample displays the online obituary database.
This new resource is designed to help residents of Fort Bend County – and those with ties to the area – conduct genealogical research, either from the library or from home.
The database includes obituaries of Fort Bend County residents, as well as some obituaries of former long-time Fort Bend County residents who have left the area. Most of the obituaries were ones that appeared in the Fort Bend Herald, although some obituaries are available from random issues of the Houston Chronicle that were donated by volunteers.
Also included are public death records from the Fort Bend County courthouse.
The database now contains nearly 40,000 records and will continue to grow as new records and obituaries are added from the library’s in-house files. The kinds of information contained in the burial records include name, birth and death dates, and cemetery of burial.
Some of the records may also include miscellaneous notes, such as military history or family members. Some of the records may not contain all of these details, however, if the information was not available on the original record.
Obituaries dating from August 1, 2007, to the present contain actual .jpg images of obituaries that appeared in the Fort Bend Herald. Images of obituaries published prior to that time will be progressively added to the database each month.
Researchers may access the database via three portals in the library’s website at www.fortbend.lib.tx.us. The information can be found under the “obituaries” tab in the online catalog; the Quick Links drop-down menu on the main page and the genealogy page in the “About Us” section.
A search using the “CrossSearch” tab will also include any results from the obituary database.
The obituary database is the latest stage of a project begun many years ago by the Genealogy Department’s volunteers and staff, who worked to collect and compile a record of all the Fort Bend County cemeteries, the people buried in them and obituaries that appeared in area newspapers.
In 1997, this burial information was published as a five-volume set entitled “Registry of Cemeteries in Fort Bend County, Texas.” A supplement was published in 2004, and another supplement is currently being assembled.
The resource is housed in the Genealogy Department at George Memorial Library in Richmond.
