The Cambridge Room at the Cambridge Public Library has a vast storehouse of material related to the history of this most historic American city. Recently, they have allowed the staff at the Internet Archive access to a variety of materials, resulting in a number of primary documents that now reside on this site. Here, users can access the annual Cambridge business directories which profile local...

Boston merchant Harbottle Dorr, Jr. (1730-1794) was a noted merchant and member of the Sons of Liberty. He was also an avid newspaper reader. Beginning in 1765, Dorr spent more than a dozen years purchasing newspapers, writing comments in margins, inserting reference marks in articles, and assembling his own indexes. His papers of interest included the Boston Evening-Post, the Boston-Gazette, and...

Researching and documenting local histories can be difficult work, as any genealogist or amateur historian can attest to. Barbara Stewart and her colleagues at the University of Massachusetts have created a valuable Web-based resource for people interested in researching Franklin County in Massachusetts. Essentially, the Archive Index allows users to search for articles (organized by subject) from...

From its auspicious beginnings in 1792, the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) has grown to be one of the major historical research libraries and manuscript repositories in New England. Along with its public outreach programs (which visitors can learn about on the site), the society also offer a number of fellowship programs for visiting scholars and persons interested in utilizing its...