Military Records

A useful tool for establishing military service is the Veterans' Deaths and Burials Index, prepared by the Veterans' Graves Survey project. Although not complete, it includes the names of many deceased veterans from the Revolutionary War through the Vietnam era. The cards include some or all of the following: name, war served, age, whether died in service, where and when died, where buried (town and cemetery), branch of service, death certificate number. There are also reference numbers to collections that no longer exist, ie. news. (newsclippings), mem. rec. (Memorial Record). This collection consists of 116 drawers in the History and Genealogy index corridor.

There are several other card indexes found in this area of the index corridor. Burials (Drawers 117-182) indexes burial records; arranged by town, cards include name, death certificate number, age, date and place of death, war and branch of service served, and town residence. Out-of-state Burials, found in Drawers 189-197, include the same information but is arranged by war and then name. Drawer 199 contains burial records of Women's Army Corps members, both in-and out-of-state.

Statutory authority for the index was provided by Sections 7-77 and 11-2 of the General Statutes of Connecticut, which required heads of cemeteries and registrars of vital statistics to send copies of the veterans' death certificates and the location of their graves to the State Librarian. Maintenance of the Veterans' Death Index was discontinued following passage of Public Act 82-306, effective Oct. 1, 1982.

FamilySearch also digitized a collection of records of Veteran's who died in the Veteran's State Hospital. You will find a guide to this collection below. Though not yet searchable by name, researchers can access the registers with a free FamilySearch account. The records are arranged chronologically.