About the Obituary Database
Go to the Obituary Database
Welcome to Louisville Public Library's Obituary Database. Ten years ago, former librarian Janet Metzger began an intensive indexing project for the obituary files of the Louisville Herald, the weekly newspaper for Louisville, Ohio, which began publication in March 1887 and continues to this day. Through the volunteer of former librarian Kathie Courtney & Scott Courtney,a computer engineer. A online database was created.
Their work has been a labor of love and has resulted in nearly 25,000 names included in this database.
The database includes the following information:
- Last Name
- First Name
- Date of Birth
- Date of Death
- Parent(s) Names
- Spouse(s) Names
- Place of Burial
- Date and Page Number of the Obituary in the Herald
Due to space constraints, the database does not include names of children, siblings, work information and other data commonly found in obituaries. Many records are incomplete and contain only a name and an obituary date. Some listings were printed as local news, rather than a full obituary and will not contain complete information.
The obituary database is cross-linked for additional surnames such as maiden names and parents' names. Many of these cross-referenced names do not have an obituary on file.
Photocopies of obituaries may be ordered for a fee of $3.00 for the first name per request and $1.00 for each additional name per request. Please limit names to five per request. Photocopies will be made from the microfilm copy of the Louisville Herald or from a photocopy of the Canton Repository. Some names listed in the database were reported as part of local news columns and do not include a full obituary. This is the case of the obituary page number is followed by a phrase such as "Local News" or "Robertsville News." Microfilm from the Louisville Herald is not available for Interlibrary Loan.
To order copies of full obituaries, please send your name, address, phone number and email along with a check for the correct amount to:
700 Lincoln Ave.
Louisville, OH 44641
Attn: Genealogy
Be sure to include the record number and the first and last name(s) of the person or persons whose obituary(ies) you are requesting. A printout of the information from the database would also be helpful.
You are also encouraged to send documented corrections or additions for inclusion in the database to Kathy Heller or to the address above.
Genealogy Database Source Code
This technical information is provided for the benefit of programmers who are interested in using or adapting the Genealogy Database software for their own web sites. You do not need this section in order to search the database on the Louisville Public Library's web site.
Scott Courtney, the programmer who wrote the Genealogy Database software, has received requests from others who want to use this software on their own web sites. The source code for this database is available publicly, under terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Please note that this software is very much a work-in-progress, and significant changes to the database schema are planned for the near future. The software is provided by Scott Courtney as a private individual, not the Louisville Public Library, as a public service without warranty or support of any kind.
The current version of the source code can be obtained from the CVS repository of the Drupal project, at the following URL:
http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/contributions/sandbox/syscrusher/ge...
This link presents a human-readable front end to the CVS repository, but to actually obtain the code you may find it easier to do an anonymous CVS checkout:
set CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal
cvs checkout -d genealogy \
contributions/sandbox/syscrusher/genealogy
(Note: The "\" at the end of the line above indicates that this and the successive line are actually part of the same command.)
Please read the README.txt file (which is part of the source directory) carefully before attempting to use this software.
