New Boston Historical Society
New Boston, New Hampshire
Useful Links and Site Search
Use Google Custom Search to find webpages and documents on this New Boston Historical Society website.
Enter your search text and click on the magnifying glass.
Make your search more specific by searching for "oliver bailey".
Or you can exclude results containing "pond" by using a minus sign: bailey -pond
History of New Boston, New Hampshire (1864) by Elliott Cogswell. 637 pages. Click on "Read Online" or download the PDF to search text.
History of Hillsborough County, New Hampshire (1885) - New Boston chapter transcribed by Janice Brown www.nh.searchroots.com
The Granite Monthly (1897) The article "New Boston - An Historical and Business Sketch" by Rev. John Erastus Wilder may be found at pages 211-241. Click on "Read Online" and move the page slider to page 211 or download the entire PDF, a large 30MB file.
New Boston (2004) by the New Boston Historical Society was published in the "Images of America" series. It is the most up-to-date printed history of New Boston and is an indispensable reference for anyone interested in the town's history. Click on "Preview this book" to preview its contents. The paperback book may be purchased for $19.99 at the Historical Society.
About The Farm (1910) This book by the J. R. Whipple Company about the Valley View Farm in New Boston was made available to guests at Whipple's Boston hotels. Click on "Read Online" or download the PDF, a 7MB file.
"About About the Farm (1991)" is a transcript of John Bunting's interview of Oliver Dodge. The two men looked at photos from "About the Farm" and Dodge reminisced about farming in New Boston in the early 1900s.
Those Wonderful Years 1763-1963 edited by Charles E. French for New Boston's Bi-Centennial in 1963. 64 pages. Digitized by Barbara Shobe.
Our YouTube channel is www.youtube.com/@newbostonhistoricalsociety
Winfield "Binny" Clark wrote two informative articles for the New Boston Master Plan in 2004, in addition to his 2006 inventory of the Old Mills in New Boston. Click to open PDF files about Barn Preservation and Stone Walls.
In 1989, Rena Davis compiled and printed a history of 144 years of fire fighting in New Boston, N.H. (1845-1989).
"Under the Fire House Roof" is now on-line as a searchable PDF file.
A Historical Society volunteer is adding to the Newspaper page on our website searchable PDFs of clippings from the New Boston Argus of the 1890s.
The University of New Hampshire has a digital collection of New Boston Town Reports including some but not all years from 1918 to 2012. These include Birth, Marriage and Death records, and for some years, Property Tax details. (Link updated 2/2021)
The Hillsborough County Registry of Deeds at 19 Temple Street, Nashua NH, has records dated from 1771 to present, with on-line search available for records from 1966 or later.
Other resources for genealogists:
Maps: The Maps page on our website contains detailed scans of several historic maps of New Boston. The 1858, 1892 and 1938 maps provide information about "who lived where" in those years.
Cemeteries: Do you want to locate your ancestors' gravestones in New Boston's cemeteries?
In 1994, Lisa Johnston and William Savoy created a database of over 3,000 "Cemetery and Burial Ground Records" and identified many gravestone locations. This database was recreated in 2018 by Jennifer Allocca and is now on-line.
Instructions for using the database and copies of cemetery maps are in the cemetery maps document. (The Town of New Boston cemetery page is the source of these maps.)
The FindAGrave.com database for the New Boston Cemetery contains over 500 entries, many with photos, entered by volunteers.
New Boston cemetery from across the valley
• Click here to see the names of veterans of wars up to the Great War.
• Click here for names of veterans of World War II and later wars, listed on the other side of the memorial.
• Click here for a a searchable list of New Boston's Revolutionary War soldiers, created by Mary Ann O'Neill.
Janice Brown's New Hampshire History & Genealogy web site is an excellent resource with a comprehensive Reference page.
FamilySearch is a (free) service provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, registration required.
The 1845 painting of "The Reverend John Atwood and his Family" in the parlor of their High Street, New Boston home is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA.
Reverend Atwood's younger son Solomon (on the left in the painting) later owned the New Boston general store that is now Dodge's Store.
Update: this family portrait may have been painted when the Atwoods lived in Concord, NH while Rev. Atwood served as State Treasurer 1843-1850. The painting hung in Atwood homes in New Boston until after Solomon died in 1915.
The Rauner Special Collections Library of Dartmouth College has a survey map of New Boston c.1740 drawn on buckskin.
See the library's blog entry and click on the map images for a detailed view.
During the Revolutionary War, many New Boston residents loyal to King George III migrated to the Cape Ann area of New Brunswick, near the Bay of Fundy. T.W. Acheson of the University of New Brunswick wrote an article for Acadiensis in 1997, "New Boston to New Brunswick: Anonymous Loyalists in New Hampshire", which is available as a PDF download.
In this WMUR-TV video, Fritz Wetherbee visits Frog Rock (which is in New Boston, Fritz!)
Other interesting websites:
New Boston town & library websites:
Town of New Boston, NH
Whipple Free Library
New Boston Rail Trail
Nearby historical societies:
Historical Society of Amherst NH
Bedford Historical Society
Francestown Heritage Museum
Francestown Improvement & Historical Society
Goffstown Historical Society
Mont Vernon Historical Society
Weare Historical Society
The General John Stark Scenic Byway winds its way through New Boston, Weare, Dunbarton, and Goffstown.
WMUR-TV NH Chronicle video about the General John Stark Scenic Byway.
