Chelmsford, MA Library and Historical Society Have a Lot to Offer Genealogists

Chelmsford Library aka Adams Library Chelmsford Public Library 

25 Boston Road, Chelmsford, MA USA 01824

Telephone: (978) 256-5521
https://www.chelmsfordlibrary.org

If you live near a library where your ancestors might have lived and haven't visited it lately, you might be in for a nice surprise. I have been in perhaps 70 or more libraries in my lifetime, but this local library is the one I used when I was in high school, and is the go-to library I use now for some genealogy research. I began this post with the intention of writing just about the Genealogy offerings of the Library. Then I went on to another topic, that of online yearbooks from 1920, then on to the last topic, that being the Chelmsford Historical Society, which has a fabulous page for everybody who has old, really old ancestors. Check it out. Makes me wish I had ancestors from this town. Oh, the top page of my blog, the header, is a photo of a cemetery in Chelmsford, I've used this photo for about seven years.

Local History Room

Back to the Library. Want to see what they offer? Go to their website and click on the Services tab, then select Family Search, History Library Affiliate which opens up to Genealogy and Obituaries.

The first section are the featured online resources. Researchers may use American Ancestors, Heritage Quest, and Ancestry Library edition. To be used at the Library. 

Other topics include:

Local History Room Circulating genealogy collection

. Chelmsford Newspapers Obituary Search...index to the Chelmsford    Newsweekly and Chelmsford Independent. (502 pages, beginning June 1940)

. Microfilm Periodicals

. Chelmsford Cemetery Archive (Search Burial Records)

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On July 26, 2017, I received the following facebook message: 

"Chelmsford Public Library is collaborating with the Historical Society to make past CHS yearbooks available for free online, but we need your help! We're missing the following years:

1926, 1927, 1933, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1944, 1949, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1959, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1978, 1981, 1985, 1994, 1995, 1997, 2000

If you have a CHS yearbook from one of these years you'd like to donate to the library, just drop it off at the reference desk. If you'd like to help us out by allowing us to scan it, but would like the yearbook returned to you, just leave a note on it with your contact information and we'll let you know when the scanning is complete. Thank you all!"

*As of June 2018, there are 92 books available to look at online. No books are missing. Why not check out the various book covers. For those interested in the yearbooks online, here is the link of the downloadable PDF scans of CHS yearbooks.

I noticed my yearbook wasn't included, so I brought it to the Library to be scanned. Click on the Select a yearbook to view tab to search the year you want. Look at 1925, for a look into the past."

The third section is a page the Genealogy tab of Chelmsford Historical Society webpage, shown below, extra large because I want you to see some features, three are below:

Births and Baptisms to 1699

(PDF, 17 pages)

Cemetery Records to 2007
(PDF, 189 pages)

Vital Records to 1849
(Surname index page)
Mass. Vital Records Project

The Library tab offers Chelmsford Town Directories in searchable PDF format:

http://www.chelmhist.org/library.htm

UPDATE: Printing, Copying, Scanning, Faxing

(2/3/2019)
Below is information from the Chelmsford Library.

"The library strives to meet the research and homework needs of our patrons, and this includes offering basic office supplies and services. Pencils and scrap paper are available throughout each library, and the Children's, Young Adult, and Reference Desks also offer additional items."

https://www.chelmsfordlibrary.org/services/printing-copying-scanning-faxing/

I have decided not to use the Comment feature for my blog. If you would like to leave a comment for me or ask a question, please write me at my email: BarbaraPoole@Gmail.com. Thank you.

My reason is that from November 2017 to May 2018, I received no comments, but upon investigating I found that I had indeed received 167 legitimate ones and 1,000 were in the spam folder. Google Blogger had made some changes that I was unaware of.

Hildene Estate, the Vermont Summer Home of President Lincoln's Son, Is Worth a Visit

Hildene Estate

1005 Hildene Road

Manchester, Vermont 05254

802-362-1788

http://www.hildene.org/about.html

After my first trip to Hildene in 2013, I knew a return trip would have to be in the spring. I planned to schedule our trip during the blooming of their thousands of peonies. Well, with an extremely hot spell in June 2017, the flowers bloomed and died quickly, and I missed it by a week. The trip balanced out tho, because I learned that tourists could now take interior photos  (which are below), and all the tourists had come and gone the previous week! So, although there are no flowers, please enjoy the inside of the house.

A few things; the house is open year-round, I post large size photos so you can see the details, and if there is a next visit, I'll take much better pictures of the floor diagrams. A Lincoln genealogy chart, and a lot of information about the estate are at the end of this post.

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Robert Todd Lincoln's bedroom.

Permission to post granted by the president, when I called Hildene.

Diagram of 2nd floor.

A bit of information from Hildene's website: "Robert Lincoln built Hildene as a summer home at the turn of the 20th century. He was the only child of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln to survive to maturity. Robert first visited Manchester as a young man in the summer of 1864 when he came to the Equinox Hotel with his mother and his brother Tad. Some forty years later he returned to purchase 400 acres of land to build what he would call his ancestral home. At the time, Robert was president of the Pullman Company, the largest manufacturing corporation in the country."

"The 400 acre estate with its Georgian revival mansion and 13 historic buildings includes the home, formal garden and observatory; Welcome Center and The Museum Store in the historic carriage barn; 1903 Pullman car, Sunbeam; a solar powered goat dairy and cheese-making facility and the lower portion, the Dene, was recently incorporated into the guest experience."