The Stamford Mercury has not been indexed for the whole of its lifetime, so the more specific you can be in providing a date for your enquiry, the more likely will be your chances of success. Discussions are underway to digitise the whole of the collection, which will include automatic indexing. Even then, computerised optical recognition programs have great difficulty in deciphering older print.
However, there are other aids. Lincolnshire County Council has kindly loaned the archive its exhaustive index of the Mercury for Stamford and its immediate environs for the years 1800 to circa 1844. For the period 1837 – 1887, a small booklet, Waterfield’s Annals of Stamford traces the history of Stamford on an almost day-to-day basis, while Margaret Jackson’s typescript, Chronology of Stamford 1840 – 1975 is equally valuable. Copies of these latter two, together with Cassell’s Chronology of World History are held in the archive. For more general histories of Stamford, Stamford Library can help.