My Mother has passed and I want to inform her family (sisters) in Europe. I have only the last name of one of the husbands. What can I do?

Please don't stress yourself out trying to make her family aware of her death. There is a reason she didn't keep in touch.

My DHs grandmother was from Sweden and came here to be a cook for a Senator. She met DHs grandfather, married and had 8 children. Still cooking for Senator when he had guests. When she died, a relative in Sweden was notified. She wrote back saying she appreciated that family wrote her with the news but Grandma had not kept in touch and the Swedish side didn't know her. Same with my MIL. She was 91 when she died and had been here since she was 25. She did keep in touch with her family. A cousin once said that to her my MIL was just Aunty E from America. I have met the cousin and family once in 40 yrs. I have given her my email in cards. She hasn't bothered to keep in touch other than Christmas Cards. Now her mother is gone I doubt if that will be kept up since Mom lived with them. The card was a family thing. Now Mom is gone I will not be surprised if the cards stop.

Maybe cleaning out Moms stuff you will find an address. You can then notify her family that she passed. I don't think its something that needs to be done right now.

I’m sorry to hear of the loss of your mother.
It doesn’t sound as if your mother’s nuclear family needs to know this as soon as possible if you can’t find any address or contact names in your Mother’s paperwork.

You could share her obituary with the newspaper in the area you last knew of your mother’s family’s hometown. Or Google, of course, as Google is far reaching.

You could pay and join Ancestry.com in the hope you find your family tree but that assumes your European family opted in to Ancestry.com as well.

I would use Google and hope for the best.

The first thing is that if your mother has not been in contact with family for a long time (no letters, no phone listings, no emails), it is not a huge responsibility to let them know about her death. Probably some of them have died too, without the relations informing your mother.

However if you want to go ahead, it might be worth trying to see if there is a local Facebook or Linkedin, particularly if you can manage the local language. Say that you are looking for the family, and give the maiden names of the sisters and the place where they grew up. If you know which sister belongs to the named husband, go for that as well. Worth a try? Good luck!

PS I delayed posting this, written before the other answers, which are all good too.

My condolences to for your painful loss. May you receive peace in your heart.

What country is your mother from? I'm asking because I know that Sweden has an awesome and extensive registry that's free to search (Familysearch.org) and they were fluent in English and very helpful to us. So maybe your mom's country of origin has this as well or try Ancestry.com (find a friend who has an account so you don't have to join for just this search).

So sorry for the loss of your mother. Sending my thoughts and prayers your way. Sendhelp offers good advice.

Have you been through your Mom's affects as yet? There may be some information, even if a bit dated that you will find in settling the estate. Great advice for you below, as well. Good luck. Hope you'll update us if you find something that worked.

In your google search bar,
Enter your mother's sister, her first name.
Enter the maiden name of this sister.
Enter the last known place of residence, or their birth place.

Enter the word "obituary" (so later in your search, you will not be surprised if her sister had passed away, and you did not know).

Start there.
And,

In your search bar,
Enter the sister's first name
Enter the sister's maiden name
Enter the sister's husband's name.
All 3 names.

And, if your mother's mother had died, (your grandmother), go to the free obituarties:
Enter grandma's first name
Enter grandma's last name
Enter grandma's maiden name (if you have it).

Find the obituary, and read it, under "Survived by", all the sister's names should be there. Including their married names possibly.

All of these methods can be tried for free, imo.

If she died in Los Angeles, in a way that is fortunate, as there likely will be a Consulate for her home country in LA. Smaller cities usually don’t have consuls at all or may have an honorary consulate (which imo are more public relations in what they do). Consulate offices do this type of tracking for those born in their country even IF mom became a naturalized US citizen. That she lived in LA and if the consulate is in LA will give easier search to dovetail records for consulate staff.

That is where I’d sent a letter to with your late moms info and any details as to where family may be & thier names. Also if you have any old letters between your mom and her sisters or friends from the old country, get a xerox of the envelope and include these (as lots of places do names & addresses differently from the US).
If she was naturalized, if you have that document, send it as well as it has lots of details on it & maybe her application had attachments to it. My moms was just the naturalization document with photo & seals but my dads (both the same country of birth too) had several attachments to his as he was getting exemptions from WW2 service requested by an employer and there were details on birth, entries / exits / travel in the attachments.

I remember your post from this summer regarding your moms landlord. If he did clear out her apt., he may have set aside some documents. The old passports, cards & naturalization stuff pre 1960’s look interesting. The sort of thing, you might keep if you had any collector tendencies.

sorry for the loss of your mom. Hopefully consulate will find her old relatives for you.

Gyorgyi, check to see if your Mom had an old address book tucked away.

If you know of anyone who has a membership to Ancestry.com, that person could do a search for you by using your Mother's maiden name, your Mother's married name, and the name of her parents. Some countries have very good record keeping, some not too much.