Henry Stedman Nourse [1831-1903] was the guiding intelligence behind the development of the Lancaster Collection, for which he left an endowment in his will. The various scrapbooks of local source material that he complied provide a wealth of information not available elsewhere. Aside from his contributions to the local history collection, over a period of more than twenty-five years he donated many of his books in a variety of subjects to the general collection. Many of these titles now reside in the Library’s Rare Book Collection.

Henry Nourse spent the greater part of his life in Lancaster. Having been prepared for college primarily in this town, he attended Harvard. Upon graduation in 1853, he taught school for several years, then decided to change his profession. In 1858, he went to work for the Boston firm of Whitwell and Henck, an engineering company in charge of filling in the Back Bay.

In 1861, at the start of the Civil War, he joined the Fifty-Fifth Illinois Infantry. Participating in much active fighting, he served until 1865. After the war, he was hired as resident engineer to the Pennsylvania Steel Company, and began construction of that company’s Bessemer Steel Works near Harrisburg. He remained there as a superintendent from 1868 until 1874. Nourse married Mary Baldwin Whitney Thurston, a widow, in 1872.

Having fulfilled their commitments in Pennsylvania and vacationed in Europe for a year, the Nourses settled permanently in Lancaster. Henry Nourse devoted the rest of his life to public service and historical research. He was a member of the Lancaster School Committee and Library Board, and a trustee of the Worcester Insane Hospital. He was one of the original commissioners that formed the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners.

As a historian, Nourse possessed a single-mindedness and a fastidiousness about details that has made him a reliable authority to the present day. Realizing the importance of primary sources, he produced several major compilations of records pertaining to Lancaster, among them The Early Records of Lancaster (1884) and The Birth, Marriage and Death Register … of Lancaster (1890). He also wrote numerous historical articles for the Clinton Courant.

Although Abijah Perkins Marvin [1813-1889] rather than Nourse was asked to write the official history of Lancaster, Nourse made sure that his superior knowledge was not lost to the public. He painstakingly interleaved, extra-illustrated and annotated a copy of Marvin’s History of the Town of Lancaster (1879), his many corrections and voluminous – not to mention sometimes acerbic- notes expanding the original single volume into four volumes, which are now found in the Library’s Lancaster Collection.

Nourse’s annotated version of History of the Town of Lancaster… in four volumes forms the authoritative basis a student of Lancaster history requires to piece together a clear and lucid historical narrative. In 2018, the Thayer Memorial Library was awarded $30,000 in federal funds provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and administered by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC) to conserve and image these four annotated volumes. This work ensures that people present and future will have access to the information that constitutes the documentary heritage of Lancaster.

View a presentation on Nourse’s Extra-illustrated Copy of Marvin’s History of Lancaster presented by Leslie Perrin Wilson, Curator of Special Collections at Concord Free Public Library here.

Searchable un-commented documents relating to Lancaster’s history can be found at the links below:

• The birth, marriage, and death register, church records and epitaphs of Lancaster, Massachusetts, 1643-1850. Ed. by Henry S. Nourse.
• The early records of Lancaster, Massachusetts. 1643-1725. Ed. by Henry S. Nourse.
• History of the town of Lancaster, Massachusetts : from the first settlement to the present time, 1643-1879. By Rev. Abijah P. Marvin.

 

Other documents relating to Lancaster history are available in the libraries Special Collections.