Tips for Searching the Index

Obituaries usually appeared on the first page of the daily edition newspaper in early years, except on Sundays, when notices were placed on an inside page. In later years, obituaries began appearing consistently inside the newspaper, usually two or three pages in. Obituaries are easy to spot. They appear below the heading “Todes-Anzeigen” (Death Notices) and a bold black line precedes and follows each one. Besides death notices, some indexed references are to “Nachruf,” memorials that appeared on the anniversary of a death.

A typical death notice lists

• Name of the deceased
• Maiden name if a married or widowed woman
• Age
• Address
• Family members, with relationship to the deceased

Considerations when searching the index

• Women are listed both by married name and maiden name, if known.
• If no age was listed in the death notice, but an age was listed in the St. Louis Death Register, the age was placed in brackets, for example: [38 yr].
• If the surname includes an umlauted vowel (ä, ö, ü), it is listed three ways in the index: spelled with the vowel without an umlaut, spelled with the umlauted vowel, and spelled as ae, oe, or ue (an umlaut represents the letter “e”). For example, the name Schräder would also be indexed as Schrader and Schraeder.

For historical information about the “Westliche Post,” see Harvey Saalberg, “Westliche Post of St. Louis: A Daily Newspaper for German-Americans, 1857-1938,” Ph. D. diss., University of Missouri, 1967; R 977.866 S111W.