Perry County Obituary Records
Perry County obituary records and death notices are held at the county courthouse in Perryville and through volunteer genealogy resources that cover this small Ouachita Mountains county. The county seat is Perryville, and all official county records route through that office. Marriage licenses go back to the 1880s, and probate records from that same period often contain detailed information useful for obituary and death research. This page covers the key sources for finding Perry County obituary records, from official filings to free online databases.
Perry County Clerk and Circuit Clerk
Perry County has a combined County/Circuit Clerk office at the Perry County Courthouse. The mailing address is P.O. Box 358, Perryville, AR 72126. Both the County Clerk and Circuit Clerk can be reached at (501) 889-5126.
Records available at this office include marriage licenses from the 1880s, probate records, court records, land records, and divorce decrees. The combined office setup means that both county administrative records and court filings are accessible through a single contact point. This is useful when you need to search across record types during obituary research.
For online access to court records including probate filings, AOC CourtConnect covers Perry County. You can search by name or case number to find case summaries for court filings in the county. This is a fast way to locate estate cases tied to a recent death before making a formal request to the clerk's office.
Note: Perry County is one of Arkansas's smaller counties by population. Office hours and response times for record requests may vary. Calling ahead before visiting in person is always a good idea.
ARGenWeb Perry County Obituaries
The ARGenWeb project has a dedicated Perry County page at argenweb.net/perry/. Resources available there include cemetery records, marriage records, census records, obituaries, and family histories. These records are contributed by volunteers and are free to search.
The screenshot below shows the ARGenWeb Perry County page, which hosts free volunteer-indexed obituary records, cemetery listings, and genealogy materials for the county.
The ARGenWeb page for Perry County includes surname indexes and contributed family research. It is one of the primary free resources for obituary research in this county.
GenealogyTrails also hosts Perry County obituary transcriptions. These are volunteer-contributed records covering a range of years. The coverage is not comprehensive, but checking here before moving to paid databases can save research time. FamilySearch holds the Perry County Genealogy wiki with links to county-specific record collections, and their Arkansas Wills and Probate Records 1783-1998 collection covers Perry County within its statewide scope.
Probate Records and Estate Filings
Probate records are among the best secondary sources for Perry County obituary research. When someone died with property in the county, an estate case was opened. The case file typically includes the full name of the deceased, the date of death, the names of heirs, and sometimes cause of death or burial information. That level of detail is hard to find in many newspaper obituaries from the same era.
Perry County probate records from the 1880s forward are indexed through FamilySearch. The Arkansas Wills and Probate Records 1783-1998 collection includes Perry County within its scope. These records are free to search online. For cases more recent than what FamilySearch covers, use CourtConnect to search active and recent dockets.
Divorce decrees in Perry County are also part of the circuit clerk's records. If your research involves tracking a person's life events to locate an obituary, divorce and marriage records can help establish timelines and identify which county someone was living in at the time of death.
Perry County Historical Society
The Perry County Historical Society maintains local history collections in the Perryville area. Local historical societies often hold records that never made it into a digital database, including funeral home logs, church death registers, and old newspaper clippings. If online searches come up empty for a Perry County obituary, contacting the historical society directly is a worthwhile step.
Community-level archives at historical societies are especially valuable for the period before 1940, when death records were less consistently filed at the state level. Church cemeteries and church registers in Perry County can also be useful. The ARGenWeb cemetery records for the county link to transcriptions from many of these smaller church burial grounds.
Arkansas Death Certificates and Vital Records
Arkansas death certificates are filed at the state level. The Arkansas Department of Health Vital Records office handles requests for certificates from 1914 forward. Older records may have gaps or be missing entirely.
Death certificates are restricted for 50 years under Arkansas law. After that period, they become available to the general public. Immediate family members can request certificates for recent deaths with proper identification. A death certificate typically includes cause of death, place of burial or cremation, name of the attending physician, and next of kin. That information can be essential when you cannot find a published obituary.
For older obituary notices from Perry County newspapers, the Arkansas Digital Archives has digitized historical publications from across the state. Local papers serving Perryville may be in that collection. If a specific paper is not online, microfilm copies may be available through the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock.
Statewide Archives and Genealogy Resources
The Arkansas State Archives maintains historical collections from across the state and handles research requests by mail or email. If you need records that are not available online or at the county level, staff there can often locate them in archive collections.
The Arkansas Genealogical Society serves the whole state with publications, a member network, and county-level research contacts. Their library holds materials not found in standard databases. For context on Perry County records and history, the Encyclopedia of Arkansas has county-level articles that help place records in their proper historical frame.
Cities in Perry County
Perryville is the county seat and the main population center in Perry County. No cities in Perry County meet the population threshold for a dedicated city page on this site. All records requests should be directed to the Perry County Clerk at the courthouse in Perryville. When searching volunteer databases, use Perryville and Perry County as search terms to find records tied to the area.
Nearby Counties
Perry County shares borders with several other Arkansas counties. Families in the Ouachita Mountain region often had ties across county lines, and checking neighboring areas can help fill gaps in Perry County records.
Faulkner and Pulaski Counties have more extensive digitized records collections and may hold obituary references for people who had family ties in Perry County.