Many researchers are familiar with the seminal work by Carrie Broughton to collect deaths reported in Raleigh newspapers. A former State Librarian of North Carolina, she compiled a massive set of marriage and deaths from the papers that span 1799-1893. Ms. Broughton was a Raleigh native, so no doubt these records were near and dear to her heart.
Currently, the full-text PDF files are available in the Digital Collections website of the NC State Library at http://goo.gl/FsJlh. These are a fabulous resource! The files are also searchable online with a paid subscription to Ancestry.com.
However, as I started working with them I realized I wanted to be able to do more. As PDF files, there is not a way to obtain an organized list of people associated with any one particular county. In genealogy and family history research, locality is paramount. So.. I began to enter material into a database to create a free, searchable resource. This database is now part of the NCGenWeb and is called NC People in the Papers. While the site is designed to accommodate news articles in general, the bulk of it are records from Broughton’s work. Currently, I’m working on adding the DEATHS from her books, not the marriages. Other records come from a few misc. resources.
With that said – follow this link to find A LIST OF DEATHS OF PEOPLE FROM WAKE COUNTY. Deaths from 1799-1815 had been added so far. A link to it has also been added to the Deaths/Obits page on this site.
