Daily Journal Tupelo MS Obituaries | Find & Create

If you're here looking for Daily Journal newspaper Tupelo MS obituaries, you're probably going through a rough time. Or maybe you're trying to track down information about a family member or old friend. Either way, I don't want you clicking around a dozen sites trying to find what you need.

Here's everything in one place.

Where to Search for Obituaries Online

The Daily Journal — you'll find it at djournal.com — is the main paper for Tupelo and the northeast Mississippi area. They run obituaries both in print and on their website.

Start with these:

DJournal.com/obituaries — their official section. New listings usually show up within a day of publication.
Legacy.com — the Daily Journal, like a lot of local papers, partners with Legacy for online obituary hosting. Search for "Daily Journal Tupelo" on there and you'll find years of archived listings.
Tribute Archive — another site that pulls from local newspapers including the Daily Journal.
Funeral home websites directly — places like W.E. Pegues, Holland Funeral Directors, and Tupelo Funeral Home often post obituaries on their own sites before the newspaper even gets them up.

For anything older than about 2010, your best bet is the Lee County Library in Tupelo. They keep newspaper archives on file. Might need to call ahead or go in person for those.

Submitting an Obituary to the Daily Journal

Most of the time, the funeral home takes care of this for you as part of their services. But maybe you're handling it yourself, or you just want to know how it works. Here's the process:

Call the Daily Journal's advertising department. Yeah, advertising — because obituaries are technically paid placements, not news stories. It goes through the ad desk.
Send them the text and a photo. Digital photos work fine — JPEG format, 200 DPI or better. The text should cover the standard obituary info (I'll get to that in a minute).
Ask about pricing. Rates vary. The Daily Journal charges by the line or word for print, and there might be an extra fee to get it posted online too. Depending on length, expect somewhere between $150 and $500+.
Pick your run date. For the print edition, you choose which days it appears. Online listings typically go up the same day or the day before services.

Writing the Obituary Itself

This part is harder than anyone warns you about. You're trying to capture somebody's whole life in a few hundred words, and you're doing it while grieving. Don't put too much pressure on yourself.

Most obituaries cover these basics:

Full legal name (maiden name too, if that applies)
Age when they passed
When and where they died
When and where they were born
Their parents' names
School, career, things they accomplished
Church they attended or organizations they belonged to
Who they leave behind — spouse, kids, siblings, grandchildren
Family members who went before them
Funeral or visitation details — when, where
Where to send donations if the family prefers that over flowers

But you don't have to be rigid about it. Add the personal stuff. Their favorite fishing spot. The cornbread recipe everybody begged for. What they were famous for in the neighborhood. The obituaries that really stick with me are the ones where you can tell the writer actually knew the person — not the ones that read like a form got filled out.

Save a Copy for Yourself

Here's something people don't think about until it's too late: newspaper websites don't keep obituaries up forever. Pages get buried, paywalled, or just vanish when the site gets redesigned.

So keep your own copy. A few ways to do that:

Copy the text and photo into a document or notes app
Print the webpage to PDF — hit Ctrl+P (or Cmd+P on Mac) and pick "Save as PDF"
Use a journal for a memorial entry — our daily journal is good for this kind of private record keeping
Screenshot the listing while it's still freely accessible

Some families set up longer-term memorial pages on ForeverMissed or Caring Bridge too. Worth considering.

Looking for Older Obituaries?

If someone passed away years ago and you're trying to find their listing, here's where to dig:

Newspapers.com — it's a subscription site, but they have scanned archives and the Daily Journal has partial coverage there
FindAGrave.com — community-run, has burial records, and volunteers often copy the original obituary text onto the listing
Ancestry.com — their obituary collection includes Mississippi papers
Lee County Library — physical copies and microfilm of the Daily Journal going way back
Mississippi Department of Archives and History — if you need statewide historical records

Local Funeral Homes in the Tupelo Area

These are the ones that regularly publish in the Daily Journal. Check their websites for recent obituaries — they sometimes post faster than the paper does.

W.E. Pegues Funeral Directors — Tupelo
Holland Funeral Directors — Tupelo
Tupelo Funeral Home
Sadie Holland's Funeral Home — Tupelo
Brice's Cross Roads Funeral Home — Baldwyn

Most of them get listings up on their sites within hours of hearing from the family. So if the Daily Journal's site is being slow, go straight to the funeral home.

One Last Thing

Nobody really prepares you for dealing with obituaries. It's one of those things you don't think about until you have to. If you're searching for a loved one's listing, start with the funeral home website for the freshest info, then try the Daily Journal site, then the aggregators.

And if you feel like writing down some memories or just need a place to put your thoughts during a hard stretch, a journal can be more helpful than you'd think. Sometimes just getting words out of your head and onto a screen makes things a little easier to carry.