Montana’s newspapers began in the 1864 gold rush. The Montana Historical Society offers free access to millions of digitized Montana newspaper pages, including papers from towns on or near reservations.
Montana obituaries in historic newspapers
The Montana Post began in Virginia City in 1864, at the height of the gold rush, and later moved to Helena. Its notices recorded deaths in the mining camps, including deaths by accident, violence and vigilante hangings.
Helena, Butte and Missoula became the territory’s newspaper towns, and Butte’s copper mines drew Irish, Cornish, Finnish, Serbian and other immigrants whose deaths, often in mine accidents, filled the local papers. The 1917 Speculator Mine fire in Butte killed 168 men, and newspapers printed the lists of the dead.
The Montana Historical Society retired its earlier Montana Newspapers website and now offers its digitized papers through a free public access portal hosted by Newspapers.com, reached from the Society’s newspaper page, as well as through Chronicling America.
Where to find Montana obituaries
Digitized Montana newspapers
- Digitized Montana Newspapers, Montana Historical Society — The starting point for the Society’s free public access portal and its Chronicling America titles.
Archives and libraries
- Montana Newspapers, FamilySearch Research Wiki — Volunteer-maintained guide to Montana newspaper archives, indexes and microfilm, with county-by-county links.
Nationwide newspaper archives
- Chronicling America, Library of Congress — Free digitized newspapers from every state. Narrow a search to Montana and the years you need.
- Google News Archive — Free scans of hundreds of older newspapers, browsable by title and date.
- Internet Archive newspapers — Free digitized newspapers and microfilm uploaded by libraries.
- FamilySearch — Free obituary indexes, death records and the Social Security Death Index (free account).
- Find a Grave — Volunteer-built cemetery memorials, many with transcribed obituaries.
- Newspapers.com — Large subscription archive of U.S. papers. Many public libraries offer free access.
- GenealogyBank — Subscription archive of historic newspapers and modern obituaries.
- Legacy.com — Obituaries published since about 2000 in most U.S. daily newspapers.
Tips for finding an obituary in Montana
- Pin down the date and place first. A death index or death certificate gives the exact date and county, and then you only need to search the local papers for the following week or two.
- Search more than one town. Obituaries often ran in the paper where the person was born or had lived before, not just where they died. Small-town weeklies sometimes published a notice weeks later.
- Look beyond the word “obituary.” Older papers reported deaths under headings like “Died,” “Deaths,” local news and personals columns, funeral notices and cards of thanks. See death notices vs. obituaries.
- Try every spelling. Search initials, nicknames and misspellings, and for married women in older papers, search the husband’s name (“Mrs. John Smith”). Digitized text often misreads old type.
- Ask a librarian. Many public libraries and state archives will look up an obituary for free or a small fee, and newspaper microfilm can often be borrowed through interlibrary loan.