Today I went through some of the vaults in the basement of City Hall, where the city archives are held. My guide through the archives was Sarah Dunlap, archivist and co-chair of the archives department. Sarah first showed me the First Book of Town Records, which dates back to 1642 and the vital records that date back to 1634.
These works have been disbound and preserved. They were transcribed in the mid nineteenth century, and I plan to read through this transcription to make some sense of what is there.
Sarah also took me into the Engineers’ Vault, which is stuffed with rolled up maps from the last two hundred years.
Perhaps of greatest immediate interest is a 1823 handwritten map that marks the land owners and places of interest what is now 127A. My next stop will be curling up with Guide One to the archives, which contains most of the town records up to 1874.
Molly O'Hagan Hardy 