This digital collection is comprised of State of Montana enlistment cards for the Montana National Guard from 1890 to 1918 and from 1939 to 1945, arranged alphabetically by surname. It includes enlistment information for everyone who entered the service in Montana during this period. Below are directions for finding women in the military enlistment records, including nurses and World War II service women.
Go to www.mtmemory.org.
- Under Collections, the collections are in alphabetical order. Page through until you see Military Enlistments (Montana), World War I (or World War II, depending on which records you want).
- Click the page tile to open link.
- From the landing page you will see a preview of the items and you can view all by clicking the link on the left.
- For World War I, there is a section called World War I Nurses
- For World War II, there is a section called World War II Women
- The cards are arranged alphabetically by surname. You can search by surname using the navigation bar to the right, which has surnames listed in ranges. For example, if you want to search for Smith in the World War II collection, you would click the tile labeled Savage-Stafford and click through the pages to find the person you are searching for.
- Use the page preview at the bottom of the viewing screen to click on cards and move through the selection
- You can also search for a particular name using the Home page search bar. Select Document from the format drop down menu and then select Exact Phrase Match from the Search for drop down menu.
- Note: Please keep in mind that, while the best effort has been made to ensure that all text on all cards is searchable, some cards have defects that hamper text searching. If you do not find the person you are looking for, try browsing using the alphabetical ranges.
You can find enlistment records such as Doris Palm Brander’s (pictured here). Brander played an instrumental role in gathering the enlistment records of her fellow service women. Without her commitment to honoring their service, the records may have been lost or destroyed. Read more about Brander by clicking here!