The University of Manitoba Libraries, in partnership with the Manitoba Library Consortium, has digitized more than 800 Manitoba local history books to mark Manitoba’s 150th anniversary this year as a province.
Local history books can provide histories of families, farms, communities, schools, churches, businesses, and other institutions.
The Manitoba Genealogical Society, as well as numerous donors across the province, provided many of the books that were digitized.
The oldest book in the collection is Manitoba: The Best Country in the World for Immigrants, published in 1890.
The books in this collection can be genealogical treasures. For example, a book written for the centenary of Morton-Boissevain, a rural municipality near North Dakota, contains illustrations showing the location of homesteaders’ plots of land and more than 300 pages of family histories.
Search or browse
The local histories collection can be searched by keyword or browsed by selecting one of the filters in the left margin, such as city or institution.
The books can be searched by both the current and former municipality names, since several municipalities amalgamated in 2015 and the majority of the collection is about the former municipalities, not the current ones.
When conducting a keyword search for a first and last name, put the full name in quotation marks. Without quotation marks, the search for george bellamy will find every George and every Bellamy.
In addition to the local histories collection, the University of Manitoba Libraries offers a number of online resources that document the history of Manitoba, including books, newspapers, maps, photographs, and textual records and digital exhibits.
The university’s online local history book collection is subject to copyright. Access has been provided for non-commercial educational and research purposes only. To request permission for other uses of these materials, including publishing, copying, or distributing, you must contact the copyright owner directly, not the University of Manitoba.
