Brown and Holley Funeral Home Obituaries: Recent Notices & Search Guide

Find Brown-Holley Obituaries, Service Details, and Burial Information

If you are looking for Brown and Holley Funeral Home obituaries, the official funeral-home obituary archive is the best place to begin. Brown-Holley Funeral Homes serves families through locations in Rayville and Oak Grove, Louisiana, and its online memorial pages can include death dates, visitation and funeral times, cemetery information, surviving family members, condolences, and other service details.

This guide brings the important information into one place: where to check current obituaries, how to search for a specific person, what to do when a notice is missing, how to find older Louisiana death records, how to receive obituary alerts, and how to contact the correct Brown-Holley location.

Quick answer: Use Brown-Holley’s official All Obituaries page for the newest notices. If you know the person’s name but do not see the obituary, check spelling variations and the approximate death date, then contact the Rayville or Oak Grove office. For older Louisiana deaths, the Louisiana State Archives may provide a separate official record route.

Recent Brown-Holley Funeral Home Obituaries

Brown-Holley maintains a combined online obituary listing for the families it serves. Recent entries visible on the official site during October 2026 included the following names. Because funeral-home notices can be added or updated at any time, use this as a reference snapshot rather than a permanent list.

Name
Date shown by Brown-Holley
Community shown
John Edmiston, Sr.
October 19, 2026
Delhi, Louisiana
Margaret Ann Marble
October 17, 2026
Rayville, Louisiana
Kathy Diane Lingefelt
October 16, 2026
Bastrop, Louisiana
Wanda Byrd Smith
October 6, 2026
Rayville, Louisiana
Weston Gilley
October 6, 2026
Mangham, Louisiana
Janna L. Stokes Clack
September 30, 2026
Rayville, Louisiana

For funeral attendance, always recheck the individual memorial page because visitation, service, cemetery, or timing information may be updated by the funeral home or family.

How to Find a Specific Brown-Holley Obituary

If you arrived here looking for one person rather than the newest notices, use this short process. It prevents a common problem: assuming there is no obituary simply because the exact name you typed does not appear immediately.

Open the official obituary archive. Visit the Brown-Holley obituary listings. Start with the funeral home’s own record before checking third-party obituary websites.
Search the person’s complete surname first. If you know a middle name, maiden name, nickname, or suffix such as Jr., Sr., II, or III, keep those details available but begin with the most stable part of the name.
Try name variations. Search married and maiden surnames, common nicknames, initials, alternate spellings, and the spouse’s surname. Obituaries do not always use the name a person used in every other record.
Check the location as a clue. Brown-Holley obituaries may involve people from Rayville, Oak Grove, Delhi, Bastrop, Mangham, Epps, Pioneer, Start, and other northeastern Louisiana communities. Residence, place of death, funeral location, and cemetery can all be different.
Open the individual memorial page. Do not rely only on the short listing. The full memorial may provide visitation, funeral or memorial-service information, cemetery details, relatives, pallbearers, donation requests, and condolence options.
Call Brown-Holley if the notice still cannot be located. For a recent death, the funeral home can confirm whether it is handling arrangements and whether an online notice has been posted.

What Information Can Be Found in a Brown-Holley Obituary?

The amount of information depends on what the family chooses to publish. A short death notice may contain only basic dates and service information, while a longer memorial can provide useful family-history and burial clues.

Personal details

Name, age, birth date, birth place, date of death, residence, occupation, military service, church membership, hobbies, or other biographical information may be included.

Family information

Many notices identify a spouse, children, parents, siblings, grandchildren, relatives who died earlier, and surviving relatives. These relationships can be useful for genealogy research.

Funeral details

The memorial may show visitation hours, funeral or memorial-service time, chapel or church, officiating clergy, and whether the service is public or private.

Burial details

When burial is planned, the obituary may name the cemetery and community. That information can become the starting point for locating the grave or requesting plot information.

Useful research tip: Save the exact cemetery name exactly as the obituary shows it. Small rural cemeteries can have similar names, alternate spellings, church-related names, or nearby-town names that make later grave searches confusing.

What to Do if You Cannot Find the Obituary

A missing online result does not necessarily mean Brown-Holley did not handle the arrangements. Older notices may be harder to locate, a memorial may have been posted under a different name, or the family may have chosen a limited public notice.

Work through these checks:
  • Confirm the spelling of the first and last name.
  • Try a maiden name, married surname, nickname, middle name, or initials.
  • Search the spouse, parent, or child named in the family.
  • Use the approximate month and year of death rather than relying on an exact date.
  • Check whether the service may have been handled through the Rayville or Oak Grove location.
  • Look for a cemetery name in family papers, death certificates, church records, or older newspaper notices.
  • For a recent death, contact Brown-Holley directly before assuming no obituary exists.

For broader grave and cemetery research, you can also use the Find a Graves research guide to work from obituary clues toward cemetery, veteran, vital-record, and burial-record sources.

Brown-Holley Funeral Home Locations and Contact Information

Brown-Holley operates locations in Rayville and Oak Grove. Calling the correct office can save time when you are confirming a recent obituary, service time, chapel location, or cemetery information.

Location
Address
Phone
Fax
Rayville
603 Francis Street / P.O. Box 812, Rayville, LA 71269
318-728-4179
Oak Grove
10324 Hwy. 17 South / P.O. Box 735, Oak Grove, LA 71263
318-490-8023

The funeral home’s website states that assistance is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. For non-urgent obituary questions, you can also use its online contact form.

How to Receive New Brown-Holley Obituary Alerts

If you are monitoring new notices for a family member, friend, former neighbor, church member, or genealogy project, repeatedly checking the obituary page is not necessary. Brown-Holley offers an obituary notification mailing list.

Open the official obituary mailing-list page. Go to Brown-Holley’s obituary notification page.
Enter the requested email information. Follow the form instructions provided by the funeral home.
Watch your email for newly posted notices. Brown-Holley states that subscribers receive notification after an obituary or death notice is posted to its website.
Open the memorial page before making plans. Verify the final visitation, service, cemetery, and time information directly on the individual obituary page.

How to Find an Older Brown-Holley Obituary or Louisiana Death Record

If the death happened many years ago, an online funeral-home memorial may not be the strongest record. In that situation, work backward from the person’s name, death year, community, relatives, and cemetery.

For Louisiana deaths more than 50 years old

The Louisiana Secretary of State maintains a Vital Records Index. In 2026, its online death-record system includes statewide Louisiana death records through 1975, with some earlier records available for certain parishes.

Open the Louisiana Death Records search. Use the official Louisiana Death Search.
Start with the surname. The official search accepts full or partial names. If the first search fails, use only the surname and narrow the results afterward.
Use Advanced Search when needed. Add first or middle name, parish, age, month, day, or year to narrow common surnames.
Compare the record with funeral and cemetery clues. Check whether the death date, parish, age, spouse, burial location, or family information agrees with what you already know.

For more recent Louisiana death certificates

Louisiana is a closed-record state for recent death certificates. The Louisiana Department of Health requires qualifying applicants to provide identification, the required application, and the applicable fee. Immediate family members and certain other legally qualified applicants may request records.

Use the Louisiana Department of Health death-record instructions before submitting a request. The state record is different from an obituary: an obituary is a family notice, while a death certificate is an official vital record.

Do not order a death certificate just to check a funeral time. For a recent Brown-Holley service, the funeral home’s current obituary page or direct office confirmation is normally the faster route. Vital records are more useful when you need legal documentation or are researching an older death.

How to Use an Obituary to Find a Cemetery or Grave

For many researchers, the obituary is not the final answer. The real goal is the burial location. Brown-Holley notices often identify the cemetery when an interment is part of the arrangements.

Copy the cemetery name and community. Save the cemetery exactly as written in the obituary, along with the deceased person’s full name and death date.
Note the funeral-home location. Record whether the arrangements were handled through Rayville or Oak Grove. That can help if you need to call later.
Contact the cemetery or funeral home for plot-level details. Ask whether they can confirm the section, lot, row, plot, grave number, or burial date.
For veterans, check official veteran burial resources. Military burial records may include cemetery and grave-site details not shown in a short obituary.
Compare at least two records when doing genealogy. An obituary, cemetery register, death certificate, veteran record, headstone, or church record can help confirm that you found the correct person.

For a wider burial-search workflow, the FindAGraves cemetery and burial research hub explains how obituary clues can be combined with official vital records, veteran sources, archives, and cemetery-office confirmation.

Services Brown-Holley Funeral Homes Provides

Knowing the funeral home’s service options can help explain terminology you may see inside an obituary. Brown-Holley’s official service information describes traditional funeral services, memorial services, burial, and cremation options.

Service type
What it generally means
What to check in the obituary
Funeral service
A scheduled ceremony honoring the deceased, often before burial or cremation.
Date, time, church or chapel, visitation, officiant, cemetery.
Memorial service
A remembrance gathering that may occur after burial or cremation and may not include the body.
Venue, time, family instructions, memorial donations.
Burial / graveside service
Interment at a cemetery, sometimes with a separate graveside ceremony.
Cemetery name, community, service time, procession details.
Cremation
Cremation may be combined with a funeral, memorial service, later burial, or another family-selected arrangement.
Memorial date, disposition details, cemetery or columbarium if provided.

You can review Brown-Holley’s current options on its official services page.

Information Families May Need When Arranging a Funeral

Brown-Holley’s own funeral-planning guidance says families may need personal and vital-statistics information when a death occurs. Having these details ready can reduce repeated calls during an already difficult time.

  • Date and place of birth
  • Father’s and mother’s names
  • Social Security information
  • Veteran discharge or claim information, when applicable
  • Education and marital status
  • Immediate family and survivor information
  • Occupation, memberships, military service, and significant life details for the obituary
  • Preferred funeral, memorial, or cemetery information
  • Charity or memorial-donation preferences, if desired

Brown-Holley also provides a pre-arrangement information page for people who want to record funeral preferences ahead of time.

Brown and Holley Funeral Home Obituaries FAQs

1. Where can I find Brown and Holley Funeral Home obituaries?

The current official obituary archive is available at brownholleyfuneralhomes.com/listings. It is the best starting point for recently published Brown-Holley notices.

2. Is Brown-Holley Funeral Home located in Rayville or Oak Grove?

Brown-Holley has locations in both communities. The Rayville location is at 603 Francis Street, Rayville, LA 71269, and the Oak Grove location is at 10324 Hwy. 17 South, Oak Grove, LA 71263.

3. What is the phone number for Brown-Holley Funeral Home in Rayville?

The official Rayville phone number is 318-728-4167.

4. What is the phone number for the Oak Grove location?

The official Oak Grove phone number is 318-428-9621.

5. Can I receive Brown-Holley obituary notifications by email?

Yes. Brown-Holley provides an official obituary mailing-list service that sends notifications after new obituaries or death notices are posted to its website.

6. Why can I not find an older Brown-Holley obituary online?

Older notices may not have been digitized, may have been published under a different name, or may exist only in newspapers, funeral-home files, cemetery records, or vital records. Search name variations and approximate dates before moving to archive sources.

7. Can an obituary tell me where someone is buried?

Often, yes. Brown-Holley obituary pages commonly identify the cemetery when burial is part of the service. For an exact grave location, contact the cemetery or funeral home and ask for section, lot, row, plot, or grave information.

8. Are Brown-Holley obituaries the same as Louisiana death certificates?

No. An obituary is a public memorial notice prepared for family and community use. A death certificate is an official state vital record and is subject to Louisiana access rules.

9. How can I search an old Louisiana death if no obituary is available?

For eligible older records, use the Louisiana Secretary of State Vital Records Index. More recent records are handled through the Louisiana Department of Health and have restricted-access requirements.

10. Should I verify a funeral time before traveling?

Yes. Reopen the individual obituary or contact Brown-Holley before traveling, especially when you are coming from another city. Service locations and details can be updated after an initial notice is published.

Final Takeaway

For the newest Brown and Holley Funeral Home obituaries, start with Brown-Holley’s official obituary archive and open the individual memorial rather than relying on a short search-engine snippet. The full notice is more likely to contain the information families and researchers actually need: service times, visitation, cemetery, relatives, and memorial details.

If the obituary is not online, search name variations, confirm whether Rayville or Oak Grove handled the arrangements, and contact the funeral home. For much older Louisiana deaths, use the official Louisiana State Archives death-record search. Once you identify the cemetery, verify the exact grave or plot with the cemetery office or another primary record before adding the information to a family tree.

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