Cemetery Collections & Resources

New England is well known for its cemeteries. Some are called 'Ancient' while others were designed to be parklike with beautiful rolling fields planted with ornamental trees and flowers. Birds and wildlife find refuge in the green spaces, and the historic headstones give a glimpse into time past.

But what if you are looking for ancestors? Happily, Connecticut is fortunate to have multiple options for finding the resting place of a distant relative. Probably the most well known is the Charles R. Hale Collection, a project done in the 1930s that sought to document all legible headstones in Connecticut for that time. Less well known are the Lucius B. Barbour Cemetery Transcriptions, a collection that was recently digitized by FamilySearch. There are also many published works done by local genealogists and historians that transcribed headstones in their towns of interest. See the tabs on the side to learn more about these resources as well as cemetery art, symbolism, and preservation.