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About two years ago, an older friend of mine passed away. I don't know her family well, but I wanted a copy of her obituary to keep in memory, and never found one online (nor was there any notice of her death in their local paper). Checked Ancestry.com to see if there might be something there, and there is no record of her death at all.
Although she was mainly a housewife and mother, I know she did work for some years at least part time. However, it was a very small community that was a company town and she worked for the General Store that the company provided ... under that sort of circumstance, is it possible that no Social Security was withheld from her pay?
Ancestry.com doesn't not have a lot of recent records. Many death records are private until a certain amount of time after the death (often 50+ years). The SSDI is public but not every death is include - I think especially if no one files for death benefits. Also, they say on the collection details on Ancestry.com that "Beginning in 2014, legislative rules governing the SSDI changed. Going forward, records from the most recent 3 year period will not be available to Ancestry.com. Once a record is older than 3 years (1095 days), it can be published." I don't know if your friend's death would be included in that or not.
As for obituaries, if there was never a notice of her death in the local paper, it sounds like there was never an obituary to begin with so you would be unlikely to find one online. Generally, the obituaries online are just copies of what appeared in the newspaper.
However, even for obituaries that did exist, Ancestry.com is not the best place to find them. They own Newspapers.com so they leave obituary/newspaper resources to that site. There are other newspaper archives online as well, see here for a comprehensive list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipe...paper_archives
My wife died in 2004. She is still not listed in the SSDI. I personally reported her death to SSA, got the $255 lump, and started Survivor's benefits on her record. I have asked SSA ( by phone) why she is not listed. They refuse to explain. A side effect is that I continued to get various junk mail in her name. I had to write the 3 credit outfits myself so that they would close her "account". That stopped the majority of the junk mail.
I suppose its like anything else, subject to a % of error.
FWIW, her obit in the local weekly newspaper is now on the LDS's FamilySearch website.
I know that birth and death records are held for a period of year where unless you show your a relative you can't get them. This was to stop the identity theft scheme where people would first find a child who died about the time they were born, and they'd get the child's birth certificate. With this they could establish a fictional person. Many counties do not put the birth and death certificated on line for this reason, but you can request one.
Funeral homes keep records which typically include an obituary.
I would call until I found "the" funeral home. Then send them a nice letter with a self addressed stamped envelope enclosed---requesting a copy of the obit.
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