Genealogy & Local History

Welcome to the Local History Room! Our collection is housed on the 2nd floor of the library and contains many materials documenting North Reading’s past, including:

• Bound editions of the North Reading Transcript
• North Reading High School yearbooks (1958-present)
• Town Annual Reports (1855-present)
• Historical town maps
• Materials by and about famous North Reading residents, such as Rufus Porter, George F. Root, and Clara Louise Burnham
• Photographs, postcards, and oral history tapes and transcripts
• Prominent local families’ genealogies
• Street lists (1965-present) and telephone directories

Browse all of our online resources below:

• NEW!! Check out our historical photo archive on Flickr!
• Ancestry
• FamilySearch
• North Reading High School Yearbooks [view online]
• North Reading Transcript Archive [view 1956-2013 online]
• Rare local texts:
  • The Genealogical History of the Town of Reading, Mass. by Hon. Lilley Eaton
  • A History of North Reading by Samuel LePage 
  • Proceedings of the 250th Anniversary of the Ancient Town of Redding by Chester W. Eaton
  • Vital Records of Reading, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850, compiled by Thomas W. Baldwin
• North Reading’s register of historical buildings, structures, and objects [view online]
• Town Annual Reports [view 1855-1899 online]

You can find more local and state resources here:

• Digital Commonwealth
• Flint Memorial Library Local History Blog
• Leventhal Map Center: Boston & New England Maps
• Massachusetts Archives
• Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System
• Massachusetts List of Vital Records to 1850
• Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War (Database via Ancestry)
• Massachusetts, U.S., Soldiers and Sailors in the Revolutionary War (Database via Ancestry)
• North Reading Historical and Antiquarian Society