Legacy.com Obituary Scraper

Scrape Legacy.com — the largest online obituary archive in the United States, hosting millions of obituaries published by newspapers, funeral homes, and families. Search obituaries by name or keyword, browse recent obituaries by US state, or fetch any obituary page by URL — and get the deceased's name, birth and death dates, age, city and state, the full obituary text, photos, and guest book visit counts. Pure HTTP, no login, no cookies, no proxy required.

What this actor does

• Three modes: search, browseByState, byUrl
• Full obituary records: name, birth/death dates, age, city/state, full text, photos
• State browsing: scan recent obituaries and keep only those located in a chosen US state
• Filters: death-date range, contains-keyword, max pages scanned
• Photo galleries: photo URL plus all gallery photos when published
• Empty fields are omitted

Data source

Data is served from obits.legacy.com, the obituary platform behind Legacy.com's "Legacy" obituary pages (https://www.legacy.com/legacy/<slug>). Search and browse pages are public HTML; each obituary page embeds structured JSON-LD data (name, dates, address, full text, photos) plus guest book visit counts. No authentication, cookies, or paid infrastructure is used.

Output per obituary

• obituaryId — Legacy.com's internal obituary UUID
• name, givenName, familyName — deceased's full name and parts
• birthDate, deathDate — ISO dates (YYYY-MM-DD)
• age — age at death, derived from birth/death dates when both are present
• city, state — location from the obituary's address (2-letter US state code)
• headline — e.g. Jean Smith Obituary 2026
• description — short obituary description
• genre, articleSection — content category labels from the embedded article metadata
• obituaryText — the full obituary text (paragraphs separated by blank lines)
• datePublished, dateCreated, dateModified — publication timestamps (date part)
• photoUrl — the obituary's main photo
• galleryPhotoUrls[] — all photos from the obituary's photo gallery
• guestBookVisits — the guest book visit counter shown on the page
• sourceUrl — canonical Legacy.com URL of the obituary
• recordType: "obituary", scrapedAt

In search and browseByState modes every emitted record is the full obituary detail record above. If an obituary detail page cannot be loaded (rare — page not yet on the obituary platform), the record falls back to the listing fields name, deathDate, photoUrl, snippet, and sourceUrl; no null fields are ever emitted.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / browseByState / byUrl
searchQuery	string	smith	Free-text query matching name or obituary text (mode=search)
state	string	TX	US state filter — browse recent obituaries (mode=browseByState) or filter search results by state
obituaryUrls	array	–	Full obituary URLs to fetch (mode=byUrl)
dateRangeFrom	string	–	Keep obituaries with death date ≥ this ISO date
dateRangeTo	string	–	Keep obituaries with death date ≤ this ISO date
containsKeyword	string	–	Keep obituaries whose name/headline/text contains this substring
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap on emitted records (1–1000)
maxPages	int	10	Max result/feed pages to scan, 10 results per page (1–500)
proxyConfiguration	object	off	Optional Apify proxy, engaged only if blocked

Example: search by name

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "smith",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: browse recent obituaries in Texas

{
  "mode": "browseByState",
  "state": "TX",
  "maxItems": 10,
  "maxPages": 20
}

Example: date-range filtered search

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "patricia",
  "dateRangeFrom": "2026-01-01",
  "dateRangeTo": "2026-12-31",
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: fetch specific obituaries by URL

{
  "mode": "byUrl",
  "obituaryUrls": [
    "https://www.legacy.com/legacy/osea-ocasio",
    "https://www.legacy.com/legacy/karen-todd"
  ]
}

Limitations

• US obituaries only — the actor targets the obituaries served by obits.legacy.com. Legacy.com's newspaper-branded and international properties use different page structures.
• No direct state search — the obituary search index has no state filter, so browseByState scans the most recent obituaries (up to maxPages × 10) and keeps those in the chosen state. Older obituaries may require more pages to find.
• Detail-page fallback — if an obituary detail page cannot be loaded (rare — page not yet on the obituary platform), the record is emitted with the listing fields only (name, deathDate, photoUrl, snippet, sourceUrl).
• Per-record completeness varies — not every obituary publishes birth dates, photos, or full text; missing values are omitted, never filled with placeholders.
• Guest book visits — only the visit counter shown on the page is collected; guest book entries themselves are not scraped.

Use cases

• Genealogy research — bulk-export obituary records with dates, locations, and full text for family-history projects
• Death-notice monitoring — watch for obituaries of specific people or in specific states
• Legal & probate — collect proof-of-death notices published by families and funeral homes
• Funeral-industry intelligence — analyze obituary volume, locations, and publication patterns
• Journalism — find and verify obituary details for reporting
• Academic research — assemble structured datasets of US death notices

FAQ

What is the data source? Obituaries are fetched from obits.legacy.com, the platform that serves Legacy.com's obituary pages. This is a third-party actor using the public website — it is not affiliated with Legacy.com.

Is a proxy or login required? No. The public pages are served without cookies or authentication. An optional proxy is available as a fallback if the source starts blocking requests.

What does browseByState do? The obituary search index does not expose a state filter directly, so this mode scans the most recent obituaries (up to maxPages × 10 pages) and keeps only those whose obituary address lists the chosen state. The more recent the obituaries you need, the fewer pages are needed. The same state value can also narrow search results — the filter is applied whenever a state is set.

How fresh is the data? Search and browse modes surface the most recently published obituaries first, so data is typically same-day fresh for new deaths.

Why are some fields missing on some records? Not every obituary publishes every piece of information — e.g. some obituaries omit birth dates or photos. Missing values are simply omitted from the record; nothing is filled with placeholder values.

What date formats are accepted for dateRangeFrom / dateRangeTo? ISO YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 2026-01-01). Death dates are compared at day granularity.

Can I scrape obituaries from other Legacy.com locales? This actor targets US obituaries served by obits.legacy.com. Legacy.com's newspaper-branded and international properties use different page structures.

Does this actor collect obituary photo URLs only, or the photo files? It collects the public photo URLs (they load without any special headers). Downloading the images themselves is up to your pipeline.

What if my search returns nothing? Try fewer filters, a broader searchQuery, or raise maxPages. Zero results is reported in the run's status message and the run still succeeds.