When you learn about the new online index of Brunswick, Maine newspapers, you’re going to hope some of your ancestors settled in this historic mill town about 30 minutes north of Portland.
Cabot Manufacturing Co. cotton textile factory, Brunswick Falls, Brunswick, Maine, circa 1912. Source: Postcard published by Mason Brothers, Boston, Massachusetts.
Thanks to retired history teacher and historian Richard F. Snow, you can look at an online index, called the Snow Index, of articles, obituaries, marriages, and photos published in the Brunswick Telegraph and the Brunswick Record newspapers, from 1853 to 1960.
The database contain more than one million entries, including about 11,000 obituaries and more than 10,000 marriages and 36,000 photos.
The Snow Index is available for free to the public on the Curtis Memorial Library website.
This is an index of citations that provide a person’s name, type of article (obituary, marriage, history, photo, advertisement), newspaper name, date, and page number. From there, you will need to look at the microfilm image to see the newspaper item. If you live at a distance, perhaps a friendly call or email to the library will help you get a copy of the item.
In some cases, the index provides a short line of text, such as “Landlord Boucher is going to close the City Hotel this month and will open the Brunswick House, nearer the railroad station….” In the case of a marriage, the wife’s maiden name is sometimes included.
According to an article in The Times Record, “Snow spent 10 years researching, reading and compiling notes from the archives of the Brunswick Telegraph dated from 1850-1903, and Brunswick Record archives dated from 1903-1960 for his books, Old Sagadahoc, A History of Birch Island, and The Snows of Casco Bay.
Mr. Snow put in “countless hours of scanning articles and snapping pictures of old photos to build the Snow Index.”
French-Canadian names
Genealogists on both sides of the 49th parallel may find this collection useful to their research. Thousands of Canadians, especially from Quebec and New Brunswick, immigrated to Maine between 1840 and 1930 to work in the textile mills. It is likely some of them settled in Brunswick.
A quick search in the Snow Index for French-Canadian names, such as Boucher, Houle, Leblanc, and Tremblay, produced several results.
Town directories
While visiting the Curtis Memorial Library website, take note of the online collection of Town Directories — 1867 – 1985 and the Digitized Brunswick History.
