Genealogy FAQ

The local history room is located on the second floor of Kalamazoo Public Library’s Central Library at 315 S. Rose Street.

The phone number for the local history room desk is 269-553-7808.  You may also send us a request by mail at Kalamazoo Public Library, Local History Room, 315 S. Rose Street, Kalamazoo, MI 49007.

You can either call the local history room desk at 269-553-7808, send a request by email to Catherines@kpl.gov or send your request by mail to the attention of Catherine Serra at Kalamazoo Public Library, Local History Room, 315 S. Rose Street, Kalamazoo, MI 49007. In your request we will need the full name of the person you are looking for and the approximate year in which they died. If the person died outside of Kalamazoo County during years not covered by our Kalamazoo Gazette index (1890-1938), meaning that we cannot find a death date using the Kalamazoo County Death Index, you will need to send an exact date of death before we can perform a search. Once we have an exact date of death we will search the Kalamazoo Gazette for five days. We will let you know whether we are able to locate the obituary or not. We do not charge if we are not able to find anything.

We charge $1.00 for each obituary we mail out.

We have copies of the Kalamazoo Gazette going as far back as 1834 with a gap in the collection during the Civil War years from 1862-1870.

The Kalamazoo Public Library’s Local History Room maintains an index of Kalamazoo Gazette articles.  The focus of the index is on vital statistics (births, deaths and marriages) but there are also common interest articles starting in 1969 and moving toward the present such as sporting events, local politics and more.  Click here for specific searching instructions. 

The Local History Room sponsors many different programs both at the library’s central location as well as at branches.  These events include book signings, genealogy workshops, genealogy lock-ins, guest speakers discussing local history topics and more. 

Upcoming local history programs are listed in the library’s LINK newsletter and in the local history calendar on the library’s website.   This calendar lists a variety of events of historical interest held in Michigan but concentrating on southwest Michigan.  The Local History events at Kalamazoo Public Library are listed here as well.

The records on Kalamazoo State Hospital patients have been closed for eternity to everyone, including members of the family.  These patients can be tracked on the U.S. Federal census and records of their deaths can be found in the Kalamazoo County Death Index.  However, even with a death date, it is rare to find an obituary in the Kalamazoo Gazette for people who died in the State Hospital.  State Hospital patients came from all over Michigan and if they had obituaries published it was often in the county where they were living before they were admitted. You can also find information on their admission to the hospital in the probate court in the county where they were living when they were admitted provided that they were admitted involuntarily, which most patients were.  This will generally tell who had the person admitted, the symptoms they were exhibiting at the time and any medication they were taking.

Divorce records are held by the Kalamazoo County probate court.