Texas Obituary Project

Project currently (Nov 2023) contains about 8100 entries

Enter any of a person's name in this field. The search is not case-sensitive,
and you can also search for a year, or month, a city, or tag words, like "AIDS"
"violence" "Black" "Latino" "female" "transgender" "drag" "COVID" etc
or...a combination of search terms

The initial goal of the database was to include all obituaries that
appeared in the publication This Week in Texas, focusing especially on the "AIDS years" of 1982 through 2000. And I began with 1975.

That has been completed. Significant data from other publications, like the Montrose Voice, Houston Voice, Dallas Voice, Houston Chronicle, etc, etc, are also included, and many more statewide.

This project was developed by JD Doyle, and could not have been done without the cooperation of the member organizations of Houston ARCH, the Houston Area Rainbow Collective History. Its organizations (especially GCAM) very graciously allowed access to publications
in their holdings.

About This Project
About The Data

Hints on searching: the internal search engine is precise, so if you are searching for "Ken West" you will get different results than for "Kenneth West," so try variations of someone's name. Also, it often narrows down the results to just search on a last name.

A note about the search engines on this page. This is a bit unusual, I am providing a second
search engine. It and the search at the top of the page have pros and cons. The Google search
below does all my sites at once: this one, along with Houston LGBT History and Queer Music
Heritage, and also The Banner Project site. But it is limited to 100 hits. The search engine at the
top does not have a limit on hits, though it does show a few ads.

Website History

Research begun on this project September 2013. Website launch 1/21/14.

Inspiration for this site: in 2013 I discovered the website of obituaries that appears in the
Bay Area Reporter (San Francisco), and realized that a website for Texas could be established.
I took the proposal to the group Houston ARCH (Houston Area Rainbow Collective History),
and they thought it was a great idea and then everyone took two steps back. After a few months
I decided to do it myself. A couple of the member groups loaned me issues of This Week in Texas
to augment the decent collection I had on my own. While I received advice from those who set up
the BAR site I did a different design method, as I wanted an individual page for each person
honored, rather than the retrieval of thumbnail obituaries. I wanted to be able to add additional
information, photos, cross reference links, and more.

For the past few years Dr Laura E McMorris, of Austin, has been an invaluable
and amazing volunteer researcher for this project, and I cannot thank her enough.
To show the progress, in Feb 2015 it reached the 5000 mark.

Interactive AIDS Memorial Quilt

My Main Websites
[ Click on each image ]

Getting Personal...

Above, a relevant article

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