Connecticut Town Guides

Connecticut Town Guides was first put together in 2016! After almost ten years, we decided to relaunch the guide as a webpage with links to digital microfilm and newly digitized collections. It will also be easier to make additions and corrections to the content. We hope researchers will enjoy this new format! You can still find the 2016 edition here. 

Connecticut Town Guides:
Compiled from Collections at the CT State Library

Introduction

                Many people visit the Connecticut State Library to research their family history. We hold one of the best genealogy collections in Connecticut including our indexes to pre-1850 vital records, cemetery inscriptions, church & family bible records, marriage & death notices, and probate estate papers. Though these indexes are state-wide by surname, we also hold records for each town. As any person who attempts to do genealogy research in Connecticut discovers, knowing what town a family lived in is very important.  Connecticut currently has one hundred and sixty-nine towns each with their own vital, land, and probate district chronology.  As towns in Connecticut were created, most were set off from a parent town. County boundaries also changed throughout Connecticut's history, so knowing a parent town or knowing in which county a town was located over time can help researchers search for court and other records. 

                The purpose of these Town Guides is to have in one place basic information about each town. This includes the year it was established, the parent town, historical county information, vital and church record information, a probate district chronology, a list of cemeteries that were inventoried in the Hale Collection, and links to a newly digitized cemetery collection done by Barbour.

                The Barbour Collection Index of pre-1850 Connecticut Vital Records is well known to many genealogists. What is not as well known are the sources used to compile the index. Researchers will note that vital records for some towns begin later than when the town was established. This is because many towns kept their vital records within other sources such as land or town meeting books. Where this is the case as noted in the Barbour Collection volume, it is included in the Town Guides. Also a few towns published their vital records, or a published source was used for the Barbour Collection Index. In these cases, the Index references the published copy, not the original record. This information is given in the Town Guides as well. See the tab for Barbour Collection in this Guide for more information about the Barbour Collection and links to the state-wide index and volumes for each town.

Not included in this guide are records located within Record Group 062, Town Records. Finding Aids to these materials can be found on the CT State Archives, ArchivesSpace portal. 

Codes/ Abbreviations used

Barbour Collection:          The time period and/or sources indexed in the Barbour Collection 
CSL # :                             The Connecticut State Library microfilm number or call number
D.A.R.:                             Daughters of the American Revolution
LDS # :                            The Latter-day Saint microfilm number
Main Vault:                       Reference to a collection in the State Archives *
RG:                                  Record Group. Reference to a collection in the State Archives *
SLI:                                  Indicates wether the records appear in our Church Records Index;                                                                             Abstract available means they are searchable on Ancestry.com

* See the Guide to Access Archives & Secured Collections for helpful and important information.