Funeral Programs Sought for Online Database

February-April, 2015

Middle Peninsula African-American Genealogical and Historical Society (MPAAGHS) is seeking funeral programs for inclusion in its Virginia African-American Funeral Programs Project. A collaboration with FamilySearch, this project features a free searchable online database at FamilySearch.org. The collection already contains more than 10,000 funeral programs and over 200,000 names of deceased persons and their families and friends mentioned in the programs. Funeral programs are a treasure trove of family history because they provide such a wealth of information about the deceased, information that is often not recorded elsewhere. Most of the programs in the collection are those of persons from Middle Peninsula and Northern Neck Virginia. However, the scope of the collection is broad and any funeral programs will be accepted.

Persons having small or large collections of funeral programs are invited to lend their programs to the project. The programs will be copied and returned, and will not be harmed by the copying process. The last collection took place in 2009, so all programs since that time are sought. MPAAGHS will be able to catch duplications. Therefore, individuals are encouraged to submit programs from prior to that time as well. Of particular interest are programs from the 1930s through the 1970s and family funeral letters – documents that were often used prior to the time of printed programs.

Programs will be collected from now through the end of March. They may be submitted at any of several scheduled collection sites. Dates, times, and places for those collections are listed below.

For further information about the Virginia African-American Funeral Programs Project, call 804.651.8753.

Virginia African-American Funeral Programs Project

2015 Collection Times and Places