Capt. Joseph Rickards
1835 - 1875
After the Civil War, he became the sheriff of Clay County, Kansas. He is the only one to have arrested Jessie James and his gang. Unfortunately, they were released the next day for lack of cause. Jessie James soon became America's number one outlaw.

Ralph Seefeld Obituary Collection

Ralph Seefeld, with the help of the Genealogical Society of South Whidbey Island has collected virtually all obituaries for Island County residents from local newspapers. These obituaries range from the 1890s through December 2010; however, there are gaps for The Island County Times in the early 1890's and the South Whidbey Record before 1935 and during 1944. By August, 2010, all three county newspapers had commenced placing their obituaries online and for this reason we have ceased adding to our collection. You may find them online at:

• South Whidbey Record
• Whidbey News Times
• Whidbey Examiner

Since these obituaries are scanned from newspapers, the Society takes no responsibility for their accuracy. If you have an obituary missing from our collection, please send it to us and we'll gladly add it.

In May of 2011 the last obituaries were digitized, named and filed. All 23,449 of them! This has been a labor intensive process and a special thanks is in order for everyone who helped bring the project to a successful conclusion. First and foremost, thanks to Ralph Seefeld who searched for obituaries from every old Island County newspaper he could find. Most of the obituaries in those 55 binders are due to his diligence on the project over a period of many years. Without Ralph – there would be no obituary collection!

Secondly, thanks to all the members who scanned, cropped, researched maiden names, named the scanned files, and filed paper copies of the thousands and thousands of obituaries. So, special thanks to the following people for all they did to make this project a success:

Jerry Case	Sue Fessenden	Doreen Johnson	Mary Sue Kriefall
Jan Martin	Bob Richardson	Laura Roetcisoender	Jay Saul
Ralph Seefeld	Barbara Vogelsberg	Marilynn Wright

Find an obituary with Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching

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or click on the first letter of the last name to scrol through an alphabetical list.

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