The Morning Star was a weekly newspaper published by the Freewell Baptists of northern New England, beginning in 1826 and publishing continuously until 1911. Although most of the content in each issue was of religious nature (including sermons, Bible passages, and general religious instruction) or news items of general interest to the denomination, by 1834 the paper became increasingly devoted to delivering anti-slavery messages. Abolitionist content increased under the editorship of William Burr in the 1830s, and continued when the Rev. Oren B. Cheney, the future founder of Bates College, became editor in 1853.

The paper began publishing in Limerick, Maine, but moved to Dover, New Hampshire in 1833. Over its lifetime, the paper was also published in Portland, Maine, as well as in New York, Boston, and Chicago. Publishers also frequently changed, and that information can usually be found on the first page of each individual issue. (But is captured in the metadata here as only the generic wording of "Freewill Baptist printers.")

[A note on searching: The entire collection is text-searchable; however, due to the variety of text sizes and fonts, and the varying quality of the microfilm used for digitization, broad-scale text searching should also be accompanied with individual issue searches for best results.]