There are many resources available online for those interested in learning about the history of Lancaster, which are free and accessible to the public. These include books that have been scanned and made searchable, photographs that had been digitized, and video recordings of programs on Lancaster history.
Lancaster History
A number of books on Lancaster History have been digitized and are available online. These digital scans are entirely searchable and downloadable.
- History of the Town of Lancaster, Massachusetts: From the first settlement to the present time, 1643-1879 by Reverend Abijah P. Marvin (1879)
- Early Records of Lancaster, Massachusetts, 1653-1725 edited by Henry S. Nourse (1884)
- The Military Annals of Lancaster, Massachusetts, 1740-1865 by Henry S. Nourse (1889)
- The Birth, Marriage, and Death Register, Church Records and Epitaphs of Lancaster, Massachusetts, 1643-1850 edited by Henry S. Nourse (1890)
- The Story of Colonial Lancaster, Massachusetts by Marion Fuller Safford (1937)
Thayer Memorial Library has made Henry S. Nourse’s Annotated copy of The History of the Town of available through Digital Commonwealth. Nourse, often considered the Town’s historian, broke the single volume book into three, tripling the size of the book with his extensive notations, inserts, and marginalia.
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.
Also available is A miscellaneous collection of historical papers and memoranda relating to the history and geography of Lancaster compiled by Henry S. Nourse around 1880. The searchable PDF of this volume can be found here.
Sterling-Lancaster Community Television records and broadcasts programming related to local history, as well as local government meetings, and makes their recordings available via their YouTube page.
A few examples include:
- Herbert H. Hosmer Jr. – Son of Lancaster, Master of Play. October 18, 2022
- Dashed Hopes: The Story of the Lancaster Industrial School for Girls. May 14, 2019
- Henry Stedman Nourse: Citizen, Soldier, Statesmen. June 6, 2018
A full playlist of SLCT history programs can be found here.
If you have any questions about Lancaster history and Thayer Memorial Library’s Special Collections, please contact vhatchell@lancasterma.gov
Databases & Guides
American Ancestors is a national nonprofit center for family history, heritage, and culture based in Boston, Massachusetts that has been assissting with family history research since its founding in 1845.
They provide access to billions of records spanning the United States, the British Isles, continental Europe, and beyond, including one of the most extensive online collections of early American genealogical records, the largest searchable collection of published genealogical research journals and magazines, and the only online source for records from Boston’s Catholic Archdiocese.
Library Patrons receieve free access to the database by using their Library Card through Gale Online Databases.
Boston Public Library keeps a detailed Genealogy Guide with helpful links to various resources:
- Genealogy at the BPL – provides an introduction to genealogy and family history resources at the BPL
- Geneaology Records & Resources – useful records and various resources available at BPL and beyond
- Genealogy Special Topics – guide on researchign special topics in genealogy and family history
Massachusetts residents can get a Boston Public Library eCard to gain access to many of the databases and streaming services that they provide.
The Massachusetts State Archives works to ensure the preservation and accessibility of government records, and helps protect the Commonwealth’s historic heritage for its citizens, students, and scholars.
Popular resources and guides include the following:
The First Church of Lancaster has had their historical records, dating back to 1708, digitized through the Congregational Library and Archives.
The digital collections contain the earliest extant records of the First Church in Lancaster. All earlier records were lost when both the first and second meeting house were razed during wars between English colonists and Native Americans. The volumes contain valuable records related both to the administration of the church and society as well as the vital records of the members of the church.
The records include meeting minutes, committee reports, financial records, baptismal records, marriage records, necrologies, a pew plan, and the various covenants and statements of faith adopted by the church during the eighteenth and early nineteenth-centuries.
These records are available to view here.
Digital Commonwealth provides access to photographs, manuscripts, books, audio recordings, and other materials of historical interest that have been digitized and made available by libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies from across Massachusetts.
Thayer Memorial Library hosts images from our archives collection via Digital Commonwealth, which can be viewed here.
Other institutions also have images and resources related to Lancaster hosted via Digital Commonwealth:
- Boston Public Library hosts a high-resolution 1831 Map of Lancaster, as well as copies of the Lancaster Gazette from 1828 to 1830 and the Clinton Daily Item from 1893 to 1971
- Lancaster Historical Society hosts the Lancaster, Massachusetts Historical Image Collection, compiled from images from Thayer Memorial Library, Lancaster Historical Commission, and Lancaster Historical Society collections.
Find a Grave, a subsidiary of Ancestry, provides tools that let people from all over the world work together, share information and build an online, virtual cemetery experience.
Find a Grave has information on burial and other final disposition information for your family, friends and famous people, as well as details about cemeteries and individual memorials for many people buried in those cemeteries. Memorials generally include birth, death and burial information and may include pictures, biographies, family information and more.
The Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free texts, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
The Archive’s ever-expanding Genealogy Collection includes items from the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Robarts Library at the University of Toronto; the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library; Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah; the National Library of Scotland; the Indianapolis City Library’s Indianapolis City Directory and Yearbooks Collection; the Leo Baeck Institute Archives; and the Boston Public Library.
Resources include among many things books on surname origins, vital statistics, parish records, census records, passenger lists of vessels, and other historical and biographical documents.
The Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System (MACRIS) allows you to search the Massachusetts Historical Commission database for information on historic properties and areas in the Commonwealth.
MACRIS data is compiled from a variety of records and files maintained by the Massachusetts Historical Commission (MHC), including but not limited to, the Inventory of Historic Assets of the Commonwealth, National Register of Historic Places nominations, State Register of Historic Places listings, and local historic district study reports.
A few examples of historic properties in Lancaster that have MACRIS data include:
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation’s record keeper. Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States federal government, only 1%-3% are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept by us forever.
Those valuable records are preserved and are available to you, whether you want to see if they contain clues about your family’s history, need to prove a veteran’s military service, or are researching a historical topic that interests you.
The National Archives keeps guides on how to use the archives for archival and genealogical research:
The National Archives has the following records collections digitized:
- Census Records (1790 – 1950)
- Military Records
- Immigration Records and Naturalization Records
- and more.