Lake County Ohio GenWeb

Funeral Home Records

Locating records from funeral homes that no longer exist is a difficult problem. Although a few may have merged with a current funeral home, most simply discarded their records. Since there is no requirement that records, other than financial ones, be kept, when a business closes, destruction of records is common.

The most genealogically important records are those collected by the funeral director for use in creating the obituary and the death certificate. Other records are financial, which might include who paid for the services, type of casket, service details, etc. A third type of record is the embalmer's records. These tend to have more physical description of the deceased. Different establishments may keep records differently.

Nixon Funeral Home on S. State Street in Painesville had its records abstracted by members of Lake County Genealogical Society in 1980. Records include Birth date and place, death date and place, age, marital status, parents, burial, and other genealogical details as available. These records are bound at Morley Library and cover 1933-1965.

Records from Spear Funeral Home in Painesville were abstracted by members of Lake County Genealogical Society in 1979. In the same style as those of Nixon Funeral Home, these records cover 1887-1888 and 1936-1965.