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a piece from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

B. Arguments from Tradition

The traditional evidence in favour of prayers for the dead, which has been preserved

* in monumental inscriptions (especially those of the catacombs),
* in the ancient liturgies, and
* in Christian literature generally, is so abundant that we cannot do more in this article than touch very briefly on a few of the more important testimonies.

1. Monumental inscriptions The inscriptions in the Roman Catacombs range in date from the first century (the earliest dated is from A.D. 71) to the early part of the fifth; and though the majority are undated, archaeologists have been able to fix approximately the dates of a great many by comparison with those that are dated. The greater number of the several thousand extant belong to the ante-Nicene period -- the first three centuries and the early part of the fourth. Christian sepulchral inscriptions from other parts of the Church are few in number compared with those in the catacombs, but the witness of such as have come down to us agrees with that of the catacombs. Many inscriptions are exceedingly brief and simple (PAX, IN PACE, etc.), and might be taken for statements rather than prayers, were it not that in other cases they are so frequently and so naturally amplified into prayers (PAX TIBI, etc.). There are prayers, called acclamatory, which are considered to be the most ancient, and in which there is the simple expression of a wish for some benefit to the deceased, without any formal address to God. The benefits most frequently prayed for are: peace, the good (i.e. eternal salvation), light, refreshment, life, eternal life, union with God, with Christ, and with the angels and saints -- e.g. PAX (TIBI, VOBIS, SPIRITUI TUO, IN AETERNUM, TIBI CUM ANGELIS, CUM SANCTIS); SPIRITUS TUUS IN BONO (SIT, VIVAT, QUIESCAT); AETERNA LUX TIBI; IN REFREGERIO ESTO; SPIRITUM IN REFRIGERIUM SUSCIPIAT DOMINUS; DEUS TIBI REFRIGERET; VIVAS, VIVATIS (IN DEO, IN [Chi-Rho] IN SPIRITO SANCTO, IN PACE, IN AETERNO, INTER SANCTOS, CUM MARTYRIBUS). For detailed references see Kirsch, "Die Acclamationen", pp. 9-29; Cabrol and Leclercq, "Monumenta Liturgica" (Paris, 1902), I, pp. ci-cvi, cxxxix, etc. Again there are prayers of a formal character, in which survivors address their petitions directly to God the Father, or to Christ, or even to the angels, or to the saints and martyrs collectively, or to some one of them in particular. The benefits prayed for are those already mentioned, with the addition sometimes of liberation from sin. Some of these prayers read like excepts from the liturgy: e.g. SET PATER OMNIPOTENS, ORO, MISERERE LABORUM TANTORUM, MISERE(re) ANIMAE NON DIG(na) FERENTIS (De Rossi, Inscript. Christ., II a, p. ix). Sometimes the writers of the epitaphs request visitors to pray for the deceased: e.g. QUI LEGIS, ORA PRO EO (Corpus Inscript. Lat., X, n. 3312), and sometimes again the dead themselves ask for prayers, as in the well-known Greek epitaph of Abercius (see ABERCIUS, INSCRIPTION OF), in tow similar Roman epitaphs dating form the middle of the second century (De Rossi, op. cit., II, a, p. xxx, Kirsch, op. cit., p. 51), and in many later inscriptions. That pious people often visited the tombs to pray for the dead, and sometimes even inscribed a prayer on the monument, is also clear form a variety of indications (see examples in De Rossi, "Roma Sotteranea", II, p. 15). In a word, so overwhelming is the witness of the early Christian monuments in favour of prayer for the dead that no historian any longer denies that the practice and the belief which the practice implies were universal in the primitive Church. There was no break of continuity in this respect between Judaism and Christianity.

2. Ancient liturgies

The testimony of the early liturgies is in harmony with that of the monuments. Without touching the subject of the various liturgies we possess, without even enumerating and citing them singly, it is enough to say here that all without exception -- Nestorian and Monophysite as well as Catholic, those in Syriac, Armenian, and Coptic as well as those in Greek and Latin -- contain the commemoration of the faithful departed in the Mass, with a prayer for peace, light, refreshment and the like, and in many cases expressly for the remission of sins and the effacement of sinful stains. The following, from the Syriac Liturgy of S.t James, may be quoted as a typical example: "we commemorate all the faithful dead who have died in the true faith...We ask, we entreat, we pray Christ our God, who took their souls and spirits to Himself, that by His many compassions He will make them worthy of the pardon of their faults and the remission of their sins" (Syr. Lit. S. Jacobi, ed. Hammond, p. 75).

3. Early Christian literature

Turning finally to early literary sources, we find evidence in the apocryphal "Acta Joannis", composed about A.D. 160-170, that at that time anniversaries of the dead were commemorated by the application of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (Lipsius and Bonnet, "Acta Apost. Apocr.", I, 186). The same fact is witnessed by the "Canons of Hippolytus" (Ed. Achelis, p. 106), by Tertullian (De Cor. Mil., iii, P. L., II, 79), and by many later writers. Tertullian also testifies to the regularity of the practice of praying privately for the dead (De Monogam., x, P.L., II, 942); and of the host of later authorities that may be cited, both for public and private prayers, we must be content to refer to but a few. St. Cyprian writes to Cornelius that their mutual prayers and good offices ought to be continued after either should be called away by death (Ep. lvii, P. L., III, 830 sq.), and he tells us that before his time (d. 258) the African bishops had forbidden testators to nominate a priest as executor and guardian in their wills, and had decreed, as the penalty for violating this law, deprivation after death of the Holy Sacrifice and the other offices of the Church, which were regularly celebrated for the repose of each of the faithful; hence, in the case of one Victor who had broken the law, "no offering might be made for his repose, or any prayer offered in the Church in his name" (Ep. lxvi, P. L. , IV, 399). Arnobius speaks of the Christian churches as "conventicles in which...peace and pardon is asked for all men...for those still living and for those already freed from the bondage of the body" (Adv. Gent., IV, xxxvi, P. L., V, 1076). In his funeral oration for his brother Satyrus St. Ambrose beseeches God to accept propitiously his "brotherly service of priestly sacrifice" (fraternum munus, sacrificium sacerdotis) for the deceased ("De Excessu Satyri fr.", I, 80, P. L., XVI, 1315); and, addressing Valentinian and Theodosius, he assures them of happiness if his prayers shall be of any avail; he will let no day or night go past without remembering them in his prayers and at the altar ("De Obitu Valent.", 78, ibid., 1381). As a further testimony from the Western Church we may quote one of the many passages in which St. Augustine speaks of prayers for the dead: "The universal Church observes this law, handed down from the Fathers, that prayers should be offered for those who have died in the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, when they are commemorated in their proper place at the Sacrifice" (Serm. clxxii, 2, P.L., XXXVIII, 936). As evidence of the faith of the Eastern Church we may refer to what Eusebius tells us, that at the tomb of Constantine "a vast crowd of people together with the priests of God offered their prayers to God for the Emperor's soul with tears and great lamentation" (Vita Const., IV, lxxi, P. G., XX, 1226). Acrius, a priest of Pontus, who flourished in the third quarter of the fourth century, was branded as a heretic for denying the legitimacy and efficacy of prayers for the dead. St. Epiphanius, who records and refutes his views, represent the custom of praying for the dead as a duty imposed by tradition (Adv. Haer., III, lxxx, P. G., XLII, 504 sq.), and St. Chrysotom does not hesitate to speak of it as a "law laid down by the Apostles" (Hom., iii, in Philipp., i, 4, P.G., LXII, 203).

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04653a.htm

Funny, I put some of this stuff in one of my blogs today:

from the account of St. Perpetua, written about 202:

"A few days later, while we were all praying, I happened to name Dinocrates - at which I was astonished, because I had not had him in my thoughts. And I knew that same moment that I ought to pray for him, and this I began to do with much fervor and lamentation before God. The same night this was shown me. I saw Dinocrates coming out of a dark place where there were many others, hot and thirsty; his face was pale with the wound which he had on it when he died. Dinocrates had been my brother according to the flesh, and had died pitiably at the age of seven years of a horrible gangrene in the face. It was for him that I had prayed and there was a great gulf between us, so that neither of us could approach the other. Near him stood a font full of water, the rim of which was above the head of the child, and Dinocrates stood on tiptoe to drink. I was grieved that though the font had water he could not drink because of the height of the rim, and I awoke realizing that my brother was in travail. But I trusted that I could relieve his trouble and I prayed for him every day until we were removed to the garrison prison - for we were to fight with the wild beasts at the garrison games on Geta Caesar's festival. And I prayed for him night and day with lamentation and tears that he might be given me. The day we were in the stocks, this was shown me. I saw the place I had seen before, but now luminous, and Dinocrates clean, well-clad and refreshed; and where there had been a wound, there was now only a scar; and the font I have perceived before had its rim lowered to the child's waist; and there poured water from it constantly and on the rim was a golden bowl full of water. And Dinocrates came forward and began to drink from it, and the bowl failed not. And when he had drunk enough he came away - pleased to play, as children will. And so I awoke and I knew he suffered no longer."

"We have loved him during life, let us not abandon him, until we have conducted him by our prayers into the house of the Lord." Saint Ambrose said.

http://escproductions.bizland.com/mercy/2007/01/prayers-for-dead.html