Genealogy Reference Request Guidelines

 

Charges

There is no charge for research or for e-mailed copies at this time. To mail physical copies, there is a $2.00 minimum charge for up to seven (7) pages; each page beyond the first seven costs $0.20 apiece plus tax. Prepayment is not necessary; an invoice will be sent to you. All checks or money orders should be made out to the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

 

Limits

Monthly genealogy reference requests to the Periodicals Department are limited to death notices, obituaries, and out-of-state directory searches. You may request up to a total of five items per month from these categories. If you submit more than five items, only the first five on the list will be researched. All other requests beyond the five items will have to be resubmitted the following month.

To search for information in the newspapers in our collection, we will need the exact month, day and year of death and/or burial, as well as the last known residence or place of burial if outside of Baltimore City. We will check the appropriate newspapers five days around the date supplied. Please note that our collection of 19th century city directories on microfiche is incomplete and may not cover the year you are requesting.

We cannot search an entire month or more for a name or event! If you have only a month and/or year, there are resources available to assist you. Please see our Indexes to the Baltimore Sun and Evening Sun, Other Genealogical Resources, and A Guide to Genealogical Research in the Periodicals Department pages.

The following is an example of how to format your requests:

Name	Category	Last Known Residence or Location	Date
Jane Doe	Death Notice/Obituary	Baltimore City	12/18/1877 (Date of death)
John Doe	Death Notice/Obituary	Taneytown, MD	1/18/1925 (Date of death)
Jamie Doe	Death Notice/Obituary	Harford County	7/5/1963 (Date of burial)
Jack Doe	Out-of-State City Directory	Boston, MA	1884
James Doe	Out-of-State City Directory	Buffalo, NY	1835