Missouri Archives and Libraries

These archives, libraries, societies, and museums preserve sources, maintain indexes, and provide services to help genealogists document their ancestors who lived in Missouri.

Online Recorces

 * State Historical Society of Missouri Digital Collections, index

Wiki Articles on Major Repositories in Missouri
National Archives I, Washington DC· National Archives at Kansas City· National Personnel Records Center (NPRC)· Missouri Bureau of Vital Records· Missouri History Museum Library· Missouri State Archives· Missouri State Genealogical Association· State Historical Society of Missouri· Kansas City Public Library Missouri Valley Special Collections· Ozarks Genealogical Society Library· St. Louis County Library· St. Louis Mercantile Library· St. Louis Public Library· Springfield-Greene County Library Center· Wilson's Creek National Battlefield Library· Harrison County Historical Museum TX· Newberry Library, Chicago IL

National
Mid-Continent Public Library Midwest Genealogy Center 3440 S. Lee's Summit Road Independence, MO 64055-1923 Telephone: 816-836-5200 Fax: 816-521-7253 Website


 * One of America's most complete genealogical centers including censuses and indexes, 80,000 family histories, 100,000 local histories, 565,000 microfilms, 7,000 maps, and newspapers. Surrounding states are well represented. The Mid-Continent Public Library shares its genealogical materials through interlibrary loan.

National Archives I 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington DC Telephone: 1-866-272-6272 Fax:  301-837-0483 Website Email


 * Nationwide censuses, pre-WWI military service and pensions, passenger lists, naturalizations, passports, federal bounty land, homesteads, bankruptcy, ethnic sources, prisons, and federal employees. The National Archives Building in Washington, DC (Archives I), houses textual and microfilm records relating to genealogy, American Indians, pre-World War II military and naval-maritime matters, the New Deal, the District of Columbia, the Federal courts, and Congress.

National Archives at Kansas City 400 West Pershing Road Kansas City, MO 64108 Telephone: 816-268-8000 Website

The National Archives at Kansas City, Missouri has the records of regional federal offices for Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska, including the following:


 * Federal naturalization records including A-files
 * Bureau of Indian Affairs and other American Indian records
 * Copies of federal census, military, federal land records, and immigration records
 * Specialties include frontier and territorial history, and American Indians of the Northern Great Plains.

National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) 1 Archives Drive St. Louis, MO 63138 Telephone: 314-801-0800 Fax:  314-801-9195 E-mail: [mailto:MPR.center@nara.gov MPR.center@nara.gov] Internet: National Personnel Records Center


 * The National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis is part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). It is the central repository for both the military and civil services personnel-related records. It maintains military personnel records for servicemen and servicewomen discharged from 1912 to 1952* (*i.e. 62 years after discharge). Use Standard Form SF-180 to order files. Records prior to WWI are in Washington, D.C.

State
Missouri Bureau of Vital Records 912 Wildwood (P.O. Box 570) Jefferson City, MO 65102-0570 Telephone: 573-751-6387 Website [mailto:VitalRecordsInfo@health.mo.gov/ Email]
 * Central registry of Missouri births and deaths since 1910; marriages and divorces since 1948.

The State Historical Society of Missouri Digital Research Centers: Cape Girardeau, Columbia, Kansas City, Rolla, St. Louis, and Springfield Website

They provide online access to journals, photographs, newspapers, and oral histories telling the story of Missouri’s history, people, and culture. Missouri History Museum Library 225 South Skinker Blvd (P.O. Box 11940) St. Louis, MO 63112-0040 Telephone: 314-746-4500 Fax: 314-746-4548 Website [mailto:library@mohistory.org/ Email] [mailto:archives@mohistory.org/ Email]


 * They have an excellent collection about early Missouri settlers and immigrants through Illinois, 90,000 books, periodicals, St. Louis newspapers, fire insurance maps, city directories, St. Louis people, western fur trade, and Missouri history. The library has an online genealogy index. Copies of records can also be ordered online.

Missouri State Archives 600 West Main Street (P.O. Box 1747) Jefferson City, MO 65102 Telephone: 314-751-3280 Fax: 573-526-7333 Website [mailto:archref@sos.mo.gov/ Email]


 * A "user-friendly" facility with originalcounty records on microfilm. Website

from all counties (61,000 reels), municipal records, 400,000 photos, 9000 maps, censuses 1752-1940, court, land, military, Missouri Mormon War, and penitentiary records. Additional databases include births/deaths pre-1910, coroners inquests, land patents 1831-1969, and naturalizations 1816-1955.


 * Note: Records kept at the state capitol were lost by fires in 1837 and 1911. Several counties in Missouri have also lost records due to fire, war, and other destruction.

Missouri State Genealogical Association P.O. Box 833 Columbia, MO 65205-0833 Website [mailto:webmanager@mosga.org/ Email]


 * Sponsors events, conferences, Missouri First Families certificates, newsletters, a blog, MoSGA's Journal, researchers, speakers, research links, and annual awards. The MoSGA collection is part of the [[Mid-Continent Public Library Midwest Genealogy Center] in Independence MO.

Surname Databases four databases with over 113,800 names. MoSGA blog.

State Historical Society of Missouri University of Missouri Ellis Library 1020 Lowry Street Columbia, Missouri, 65201-7298 Telephone: 573-882-1187 Fax: 573-884-4950 Website [mailto:shsofmo@umsystem.edu/ Email]


 * Good genealogy collection with historic Missouri manuscripts and reference books, collection of 460,000 books, 500,000 manuscripts, 150,000 archival records, 2,900 maps, databases, art, census, digital collections, newspapers, oral history, and photographs. This Society has research centers at Cape Gerardeau, Columbia, Kansas City, Rolla, St. Louis, and Springfield.

Regional
Kansas City Public Library Missouri Valley Special Collections Central Library 14 W. 10th Street, 5th Floor Kansas City, MO 64105 Telephone: 816-701-3427 Fax: 816-701-3401 Website [mailto:lhistory@kclibrary.org/ Email] The Missouri Valley Room has a great genealogy collection for Missouri and Kansas with biographies, periodicals, genealogies, diaries, photos, scrapbooks, and newspapers of the Kansas City area.[2] [3] Jackson County births 1883-1895, marriage indexes 1827-1937, deaths 1874-1909.[4] They also hold papers, postcards, newspaper clippings, city directories, maps, school yearbooks, and ephemera from local individuals and organizations to document the history and development of the Kansas City area including some material from the Kansas City School District. They provide information on vital records research, adoption search resources, how-to-do obituary searching, African Americans, American Indians, the American Civil War, explorers, Mormons, and the Overland Trail.[3] Librarians began collecting genealogical materials almost from the beginning of the Library, but in 1933, a donation of the vast personal genealogical library of lumber baron John Barber White greatly enhanced the collection. Resources continued to be added. Of note are the many now out-of-print nineteenth-century histories of counties in the Midwest, specific family histories, and many genealogical periodicals beginning in the late 1800s.


 * Great genealogy collection for the Missouri Valley with biographies, periodicals, genealogies, diaries, photos, scrapbooks, and newspapers of KC area.

Ozarks Genealogical Society Library 534 West Catalpa (PO Box 3945) Springfield, Missouri 65808 Telephone: 417-831-2773 Website Email


 * OGS has substantial genealogy for southern Missouri, Missouri in general, other states, a large collection of genealogical periodicals, maps, family histories, and over one dozen special collections compiled by area researchers. Special Collections records focus on family histories with an emphasis in the southwest Missouri geographical area.

St. Louis County Library Headquarters Tier 5 (top floor) 1640 South Lindbergh Blvd St Louis, MO 63131-3598 Telephone: 314-994-3300, ext. 2070 Website [mailto:scollections@slcl.org/ Email]


 * The St. Louis County Library genealogical collection has 85,000 print items, 9,500 family histories, 850 periodical titles, 40,000 microfilm rolls, and many electronic databases. Their emphasis is on St. Louis, Missouri, and states and foreign countries that fed migration into Missouri, including New England states, the 13 colonies, and many foreign countries. Military history, African American, and other ethnic sources are well represented. Record types include online databases, federal censuses, births, marriages, deaths, cemeteries, church records, military records, naturalizations, newspapers, wills, African American records, and yearbooks.[2]
 * Significant miscellaneous items include 850 microfilms from parish registers of the Swiss Canton of Bern, over 100 Jewish Yizkor books, and sources for Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New England, and some rare English, Welsh, and Scottish genealogies.[4]
 * Their collection includes holdings from the National Genealogical Society, St. Louis Genealogical Society, African American Research Collection, Jewish Genealogical Society, parish records from the Archdiocese of St. Louis, and the Archdiocese of Belleville, Illinois.

St. Louis Mercantile Library University of Missouri - St. Louis Thomas Jefferson Library Building One University Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63121-4400 Telephone: 314-516-7240 or 314-516-7247 Fax: 314-516-7241 Website Email
 * The University of Missouri St. Louis Mercantile Library has collections that concentrate on Westward Expansion, American rail and river transportation history as well as the history, development, and growth of the St. Louis region, and broadly developed subjects related to the humanities, with a core collection numbering over 250,000 books. The special collections of the library consist of over 400 individual collections with archival materials numbering in the millions, including over 100 historic newspaper titles, presidential letters, early travel diaries and civil war era letters, fur trade records and the newspaper and printing morgue of the St. Louis Globe Democrat.[2] The Herman T. Pott National Inland Waterways Library focuses on United States river and inland waterways history. It has 2,500 books and a large pictorial/photographic collection.[3] The John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library is one of the largest (45,000 volumes) and finest railroad history collections focused on railway economics, finance, corporate history, management practice, regulatory history, mergers, labor relations, operations, and engineering.[4]


 * A premier library for Missouri research.

St. Louis Public Library (City) Central Library 1301 Olive Street St. Louis, MO 63103 Telephone: 314-241-2288 Website [mailto:webref@slpl.org/ Email]
 * They have an on-line Obituary Index for the years 1880–1927; 1942–1945; 1992–2006, family histories, passenger lists, Heritage Quest, and Gateway Family Historian publication.

Springfield-Greene County Library Center The Library Center 4653 S. Campbell Ave. Springfield, MO 65810-1723 Telephone: 417-616-0534 Fax: 417-883-9348 Website Email


 * The Springfield-Greene County Library Center collection for southern Missouri includes censuses 1830-1930, access to subscription databases like Ancestry, HeritageQuest, and Fold3, church histories, directories 1878-2006, online deaths 1910-1964, online deeds 1833-1877, online Greene county histories, births, marriages, probate, local newspapers 1881-2006, maps, fire insurance maps, plat books, 53 active and 40 inactive genealogical periodicals, high school and college yearbooks, photos of landmarks, and cemetery transcripts. In addition, they have material on the effects of the Civil War on Greene County. The Lena Wills professional genealogist and columnist collection is found here. The Native American collection includes tribes of Missouri, the Dawes Rolls, the Guion Miller Rolls, and other Cherokee sources.

Wilson's Creek National Battlefield Library 6424 West Farm Road 182 Republic, MO 65738 Telephone:417-732-2662 Website Email
 * All of the Wilson's Creek National Battlefield Library's 10,000 volumes are non-circulating, but are available for use on-site. The collection focuses on the American Civil War period, especially on the Trans-Mississippi Theater. The library has many regimental histories and adjutant general reports mostly for the Union side.[2]
 * This library can help genealogists find ancestors who served in the American Civil War, and learn more about that war in Missouri. They have access to the National Park Service's 6.3 million name database online called the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System. They also have microfilm copies of the Compiled Service Records for all Union and Confederate soldiers from Missouri, and those from other states who fought at Wilson's Creek.

Outside Missouri
Harrison County Historical Museum Old Harrison County Courthouse 117 East Bowie (P.O. Box 1987) Marshall, Texas 75671 Telephone: 903-938-2680 Website [mailto:info@harrisoncountymuseum.org/ Email]


 * A key repository for locating selected early Missouri  and Texas  settlers. This was a center for Missouri Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. It has a great collection of family folders, books, letters, diaries, journals, and surname lists.

Miami, Oklahoma also has significant association with southern Missiouri heritage and genealogy.

Newberry Library 60 West Waltron Street Chicago, Illinois 60610 Telephone: 312-255-3512 Newberry Website [mailto:genealogy@newberry.org/ Email]


 * Over 17,000 printed genealogies. Their collection is strong for colonial America, especially New England, including local histories from all over the United States, Canada, and Britain. Outstanding county history collection for the Midwest  and Mid-Atlantic states. The Civil War collection is one of the best in America.