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“Odes to lives” by Meg McSherry Breslin (Perspective, March 8) expresses the upbeat view of obituaries that family historians have long held. Obits provide one of the best sources of information about our predecessors to be found anywhere. One obit for a great-grandmother supplied the death date and place of her previous husband, something that could have been found nowhere else.
Obits also contain clues to research, leading back in time to even earlier generations. And long ago, small-town papers devoted almost unlimited space to the deaths–or lives–of ordinary people. Cheers for Ms. Breslin for her capacity to appreciate her work and to share her observations on it.
