Official Death Certificate. The expensive way. These can be obtained from the State Health Department in Oregon or whichever department holds them in other states. They are an official document that will hold up in court for official purposes. They are expensive. The things you need from this paper, besides the obvious, are the name of the informant and the name of the funeral home. Knowing the informant allows you to evaluate the validity of the information on the form. "The lady that takes care of people in town who are dying" does not have the same credence that a spouse has.

Funeral Home Records. The cheap way. These can be a wealth of information. The funeral home is the entity that provided the information to the state for the death certificate. They will have all of the information that the official record has. They will also have information in addition: the names and location of living brothers and sisters, the names and locations of children, where they worked, the cost of the funeral, where they are buried, who took care of the service at the cemetery, the names of the pallbearers, etc. These records are inexpensive. If the funeral home is local, drop in and ask for a copy of the record. If you are further away, phone or write. When writing include a SASE (self addressed stamped envelope) for their convenience. Locating the correct funeral home can be a challenge in more populous areas but two stamps and two envelopes is not that expensive. I have yet to pay for a copy of funeral home records. Try this link to start narrowing down your search for the right funeral home.

Death Certificates from the State Archives. An in between way. In Oregon a copy of a Death Certificate from the State Archives is 25 cents. There are a few drawbacks these days. With the budget crunch, they have cut hours and instituted a pretty hefty search fee. If you can get to Salem you can sit in the archives all day and copy death certificates, and any other records they have, for 25 cents a page. Also, the death records are not available until fifty years after the death of the individual. Oregon State Archives.

Locate and buy a listing of the cemetery. The expensive way. First you have to figure out which cemetery is the family cemetery. See Death Records above. If someone has walked the cemetery, written down everything that is on the headstones, consulted the cemetery administrator for additional information, contacted the local funeral homes for any information they have, talked to the old timers in the area for their remembrances, taken pictures, typed up the information, constructed an index, paid to have it published, and put it up for sale . . . Maybe you should buy it. These listings are very valuable. They give not only the person you are looking for but the other people buried in the same family plot.

Cemetery Listing on Inter-Library Loan. The cheap way. These are the exact records that you were going to buy. However, this time you contact the librarian at your local library. She locates the book at another library. They send it to your local library and you take it home and use it. You may even copy a couple of pages for your personal use. Then you take it back to your library and they ship it back to where it originated. When the book is in high demand, or hard to replace the lending library may restrict it for in-library-use-only. This means you have to use the copy machine at the library and take good notes. When this is THE BOOK, you will go ahead and get a copy for your own collection. Since you have seen the book you know what you are spending your money on.