Our town public library is the Leach Library, located at 268 Mammoth Road next to the schools, town hall, police and fire station. Just up the street from the Londonderry town common. Inside the library there is a Historical Collections room, also known as the genealogy room. You will need to ask for the key at the reference desk, but it is well worth the extra trouble. You can also contact the reference librarian at 603-432-1132 or by email at reference@londonderrynh.org . The library also has a subscription to Ancestry.com and to other online databases (Heritage Quest, Newsbank) and downloadable audios. The card catalog is not on line.
In the Historical Collections room you can find the oldest books in the library, as well as records of town history ranging from an 1813 family bible to a book about the new playground in town “Funway Park Playground: Build Day, May 31, 2008”. Among the interesting things on the shelves are: annual reports from town meetings dating back to colonial times, a record of dog licenses (1903-1914) (1897-1900), Mayflower Grange records, Eagle scout projects, and various scrapbooks. I find the cemetery surveys very important when I’m working on RAOGK, and there is a three ring binder for each of the cemeteries in town, with inscriptions and maps.
All the Londonderry town history books, such as Reverend Edward L. Parker’s “History of Londonderry”, and George Waldo Browne’s “Early records of Londonderry, Windham and Derry” are in this collection. To see a master list of the Historical Collection, go to the website http://www.londonderrynh.org/library/library.htm and click on the “Historical Collection.”
Among the gems here are:
HIS REF 929.5b LON Thompson, Ruth Abbe. Small cemetery on the property of W.T. Boyd. Nashua, NH, [1937].
HIS REF 929.3b LON Annis, Daniel Gage. Vital records of Londonderry New Hampshire : A full and accurate transcript of the births, marriage intentions, marriages, and deaths in the town from the earliest date to 1910. Manchester, NH: Granite State Pub, [1914].
HIS REF 920 STA Genealogical notes on the family of General John Stark and allied families, copied from three manuscript books.[194?].
HIS REF 929.2 ALDRICH FILE Aldrich genealogy.
HIS REF 929.2 BOY FILE 1 Boyd genealogy.
(Other family files include Nesmith, Morison, Munsey, Patton, Peabody, Pillsbury, Plummer, Montgomery, McAllister, MacLean, Fisher, Kimball, Holland, Haines, Gregg, Goodwin, Doak, Dickey, Cargill, Blodgett, Blair, Bailey, Noyes, Reynolds, Sampson, Sargent, Stewart, Thornton, Wallace, Wilson, etc.) Please consider donating your own copy of a file of your Londonderry family genealogy.
There are standard works of genealogy such as Robert Charles Anderson’s “The Great Migration Begins”, 1995 and Savage’s “Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire”. There are also books on the town histories of Londonderry, Nova Scotia and other places where original Nutfield settlers moved on. There are also town histories of nearby towns such as Chester, Bedford, Auburn, Manchester, Nashua, etc. Regimental histories of various NH volunteer units are also valuable, and many are available here.
On the table in the Historical Collection room there is also a three ring binder with queries and letters sent to the library and historical society by people all over the US searching for their Nutfield roots. It is interesting to peruse this book, to see if perhaps a distant cousin is researching a family you have in common.
Nearby genealogical resources for Londonderry (formerly Nutfield):
Other public libraries in Derry, Hudson, Windham, Nashua and Manchester
The Londonderry Historical Society www.londonderryhistory.org
Derry History Museum, 29 West Broadway, Derry www.derrymuseum.org
The American Canadian Genealogical Society, 4 Elm Street, Manchester, NH www.acgs.org
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Family History Centers in Nashua and Exeter
Bureau of Vital Records (New Hampshire) 71 South Fruit Street, Concord
The NH Historical Society Library, 30 Park Street, Concord www.nhhistory.org
The NH State Library, 20 Park Street, Concord http://www.nh.gov/nhsl/
The Portsmouth Athenaeum, 9 Market Square, Portsmouth www.portsmouthathenaeum.org
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Next week I’ll blog about Derry Public Library….among their holdings they also have on microfilm all the “Derry News” newspapers, an invaluable source for obituaries in this area.
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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo
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