Library Has New Resource For Woburn History Buffs

WOBURN, MA -- The Woburn Weekly Budget never won a Pulitzer Prize. In fact, the biggest scoop in its six year's of existence may have been a lengthy, 1859 article titled "Systematic Roguery" that chronicled the nefarious doings of a band of thieves burglarizing homes in Woburn and Winchester during the holiday season. But the newspaper has a treasure trove of local history, and accessing those articles just got easier thanks to the Woburn Public Library.

The library has been working with Glennon Archives volunteers to the subject index cards for all of Woburn’s historic newspapers and recently posted digitized index of every edition of the Budget in its online catalog. According to the library of Congress, the Budget was published from 1857 to 1863 by H.N. Hastings, who was joined by John L. Parker to form Hastings and Parker in 1859.

The archive may be of interest to people outside of Woburn. The Budget published accounts of the Civil War, and often published letters from Woburn soldiers on the battlefront next to articles.

"While it is still necessary to come to the Library to view the newspapers on microfilm once an article is located, the online index simplifies one step in the search," the library said on its Website. "We hope to eventually digitize the newspapers and incorporate these indexes into an online search function. Additional indexes will be placed online with other Archives finding aids as they become available."

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Photo by Woburn Public Library

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).