Ryerson Index Update

The Ryerson Index is a free index resource to death notices appearing in Australian newspapers, dating back in some cases to 1831 (Sydney Morning Herald). While most of the entries relate to death occuring since 1970. The index is completely managed and contributed to by volunteers and is said to grow at a rate of over 100 entries per day. The site was updated on 31st December 2016 and now includes 320 newspapers with 5,856,742 entries including those from local Leader newspapers.

Ryerson recently  announced that a new facility has been added to the site whereby a search on GIVEN NAME only can be made. This will make it easier to locate those women with obscure given names who have married, but you don't know their married surname.
Searches have also been consolidated onto a single screen. You can now search on any one of the primary fields, with all other fields available to filter results.

Image: [Elderly woman sitting in front of a corrugated iron shed] ca 1890-1910 State Library Victoria

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Ryerson now at 5 Million

This past weekend saw the Ryerson Index reach five 5 million names. The free Australian website which indexes contemporary death notices from Australian newspapers has been growing steadily since its establishment over seventeen years ago with some of the original indexers still submitting files to the website.
Volunteers at Yarra Plenty Regional Library have been submitting information from notices from the Diamond Valley Leader, Whittlesea Leader and Heidelberg Leader. Hard copies of which can be accessed at Diamond Valley, Mill Park and Ivanhoe libraries.
It is believed that the Ryerson is now the largest free database of Australian death information in Australia, and quite probably the world. The NSW Births Deaths and Marriages index has about 4.5 million entries. None of the other states are larger than this.

Image: Example of death notice indexed for Ryerson Index Leader Newspaper January 1989

Ryerson now has location search

Location search has now been added to the Ryerson Index to death notices and obituaries in Australian newspapers - search facility.  The search is conducted through the normal search page but although the  surname is still asterisked as a mandatory field this is not so if one adds a location. In other words either a surname or a location has to be entered.

Simply enter the place of interest into the Location field and nothing  else unless you wish to restrict the search. Search for places which have more than one word, e.g. HILL END. The usual ways to narrow the  search, i.e. year range, newspaper and State, all work as per the name search. You can search for 'at PLACE', or 'late of ...' or 'formerly of ...'  if you wish. 

This is a great feature to "mine" the the names of the index for your local and family history research.

Ryerson Index

The Ryerson Index is a terrific free resource for Australian family history research.  It is a free index to death notices ranging from the Sydney Gazette of 1803 up to current newspapers.  Although it has a strength for NSW, it now covers newspapers all over Australia, including locally the Diamond Valley Leader and the Heidelberg Leader.  Indexers are currently being sought for the major state newspapers.  Please see the website for details.

A new filter has recently been added to the search page, to allow searching on all newspapers in a particular state. To use it, select the "State" field you want. If you want all states, ie the way you've searched up to now, then leave the State field blank.

Some papers, such as the Albury "Border Mail" and "Tweed Daily News" have been linked to two states, to account for the fact that their catchment for notices is on both sides of the border.

Ryerson Index

Check out the Ryerson Index

There were 410,000 additional entries included in the index during the past year, for a total now well in excess of 2.5 million entries. 137 volunteers index, or back index 177 Australian newspapers. The committee are keen to add additional newspapers to either current indexing, back indexing or both.

If you would like to contribute contact via the "Contract Ryerson Index Inc" icon on the main page.