Genealogy
No matter your skill level, we can help with your family history research. Our collection includes a wide variety of general genealogy works and focuses on genealogy information for western Montana.
Family History Writing Contest
Visit the Family History Writing Contest page.
Learn basic genealogy research skills and discover family history resources you can use to build your family tree.
View a list of genealogy classes offered at MPL
Resources
Search the world's largest online family history collection. With 4 billion records available, discovering your family's story is easier than ever. (Currently available from inside our building only)
An index of birth, marriage, death, etc. announcements from a variety of Montana newspapers. Staff and volunteers add records to this database every day.
A genealogy database to help you research your family history. Search census records, Freedman's Bank and Revolutionary War records, books, articles, and more.
Western Montana Genealogical Society Bulletins
The Western Montana Genealogical Society published several Bulletins in the early 1980s to share genealogical and historical information about Missoula County and Western Montana. The Bulletins include bibliographies, record transcriptions, resource lists, and other information of genealogical interest.
Western Montana Genealogical Society Newsletters
This collection includes newsletters of the Western Montana Genealogical Society from the 1980s through the 2010s. The newsletters provide a detailed record of the Society’s development as well as a fascinating glimpse into what it was like to conduct genealogy research at the turn of the 21st century.
Missoulian Newspaper Subject Index
Librarians and volunteers have been indexing articles from the Missoulian newspaper since 1978. Use the index to identify articles of interest, and then find the full-text articles in our microfilm collection.
Montana State Death Records – Search Montana death records from 1880 to 2002.
Housed in the Tony Veazey Montana Room, this collection is the most developed in the state for genealogy information on western Montana. We offer genealogy books on a wide variety of topics, and we subscribe to a number of genealogy periodicals.