Connecticut Genealogy

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Connecticut Genealogy Research Guide

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Connecticut Genealogy Research Guide

Quick Facts

Connecticut is a New England town-based state, and that single fact governs almost all of its genealogy: births, marriages, deaths, deeds, and town-meeting records were kept by the town, while estates were handled by probate district, and the counties never became record-keeping bodies. Its towns began recording vital events in the 1600s, so Connecticut research reaches unusually far back — provided you first identify the right town.

• Capital: Hartford. Hartford and New Haven served as joint capitals from 1701 until 1875, when Hartford became the sole capital.
• Statehood: one of the original thirteen colonies and the fifth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, on January 9, 1788. The Connecticut Colony grew from the river towns settled in the 1630s, and the separate New Haven Colony was absorbed under the royal Charter of 1662.
• Counties: 8, first created in 1666 (Hartford, New Haven, New London, and Fairfield), with Middlesex and Tolland added in 1785. County government was abolished in 1960, and the counties now serve only as geographic and judicial-district labels.
• Towns: 169, the fundamental unit of Connecticut record-keeping.
• Land type: Connecticut is a state-land state, not a federal (public-domain) state. Original title flowed from the Colony and State of Connecticut to the towns, and from the towns to proprietors and settlers, so there are no federal General Land Office records for Connecticut — land is documented by town grant and by deed at the town level.
• Nickname and motto: the Constitution State (also the Nutmeg State); the state motto is Qui transtulit sustinet ("He who transplanted still sustains").
• Where records live: most genealogical records are kept at the town level by the town clerk — vital records, deeds, and town-meeting records — while probate is handled by probate district; the Connecticut State Library holds the statewide indexes and the state archives.

Libraries and Archives

Connecticut's records are unusually centralized: the Connecticut State Library in Hartford holds the great statewide indexes, the state archives, and much that elsewhere would sit in a courthouse, while the town clerks hold the original town records. The principal repositories include:

• Connecticut State Library (Hartford) — the central repository, whose History and Genealogy unit and State Archives hold the Barbour Collection of vital records, the Hale Collection of cemetery and newspaper records, church records, probate estate papers, court records, and military records.
• Godfrey Memorial Library (Middletown) — a genealogy research library and the publisher of the American Genealogical-Biographical Index (AGBI).
• Connecticut Society of Genealogists (Glastonbury) — the state's largest genealogical society, publisher of The Connecticut Nutmegger.
• American Ancestors (New England Historic Genealogical Society) — the flagship New England society, host of the complete Barbour Collection typescripts and many Connecticut databases.
• Connecticut Historical Society (Hartford) — manuscripts, published genealogies, newspapers, and the printed Collections of the society.
• National Archives at Boston (Waltham) — federal court, naturalization, and other federal records for Connecticut.
• Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center — the leading repository for Connecticut Native American history and research.
• The FamilySearch Library and its worldwide FamilySearch Centers hold extensive Connecticut microfilm and digital collections, and the town clerks and probate courts hold the original town and estate records for their own areas.

Major Websites

These sites host digitized Connecticut records and indexes. Subscription sites are marked ($).

• FamilySearch — free; the backbone finding aid, with the FamilySearch Wiki, catalog, and large digitized collections of Connecticut vital, church, probate, land, naturalization, and military records.
• Ancestry ($) — extensive Connecticut vital, church, probate, naturalization, military, and tax collections, including the Barbour and Hale collections.
• MyHeritage ($) — Connecticut vital records and indexes.
• Findmypast ($) — Connecticut collections including the Barbour town vital records.
• American Ancestors ($) — the New England society's databases, including the complete Barbour Collection.
• ConnecticutGenealogy.org — free; the statewide birth, marriage, and death indexes released through public-records requests, also archived on the Internet Archive.
• Connecticut State Library online indexes — free; searchable indexes to church records, the Hale Collection, and other holdings.
• Internet Archive and HathiTrust — free; digitized Connecticut histories, colonial and state records, and law books.
• Chronicling America and the Connecticut Digital Newspaper Project — free; digitized Connecticut newspapers.
• Find a Grave and BillionGraves — free; cemetery listings, photographs, and transcriptions.

Law and Government

Connecticut's colonial and state records help explain the jurisdictions and record-keeping practices that produced genealogical records, and the foundational texts are digitized and free to read. Connecticut governed itself early and closely, first under the Fundamental Orders and then under a royal charter that lasted, remarkably, into the statehood era.

• The Fundamental Orders of 1639 and the Charter of Connecticut of 1662 are presented in full by Yale Law School's Avalon Project.
• The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut (edited by J. H. Trumbull and C. J. Hoadly, fifteen volumes covering 1636 to 1776) — the colony's official records, including early wills and inventories and the Code of 1650; free on the Internet Archive.
• The Public Records of the State of Connecticut continue the series after 1776 and are digitized on the Internet Archive.
• The colonial and state statutes — the acts and laws of Connecticut and the early codes — are digitized on the Internet Archive and HathiTrust.

Vital Records (Birth, Marriage, Death)

Connecticut towns recorded births, marriages, and deaths from the earliest years of settlement — marriages as early as 1640, and by 1650 the recording of all three was the town clerk's duty — which makes Connecticut vital records among the earliest in the country. Statewide filing, with copies sent to the state, began in 1897; there is no statewide index for the roughly half-century before 1897, so for that period you must know the town.

The Barbour Collection is the master statewide index and abstract of Connecticut town vital records from the 1600s to about 1850. Compiled at the Connecticut State Library under Lucius Barnes Barbour, it draws the vital records of most Connecticut towns together into a single alphabetical index and a set of bound town volumes, and it is the usual starting point for any pre-1850 Connecticut ancestor.

• The Barbour Collection is free through the FamilySearch Catalog; the complete town typescripts are searchable on American Ancestors ($); and it is indexed on Ancestry as Town Birth Records ($), Town Marriage Records ($), and Town Death Records ($).
• The Hale Collection of Cemetery Inscriptions and Newspaper Notices, 1629–1934 ($) preserves headstone inscriptions from more than two thousand Connecticut cemeteries — many of the stones since lost — together with marriage and death notices abstracted from Connecticut newspapers; it is also at the Connecticut State Library and on FamilySearch.
• The Connecticut Deaths and Burials Index, 1650–1934 ($), and MyHeritage's Connecticut Births ($) and Connecticut Marriages ($), add further indexed coverage.
• For deaths after 1897, the Connecticut Death Index, 1917–2017 ($) and the Connecticut Death Index, 1949–2012 ($, also on MyHeritage) are searchable, and the statewide death index is free through ConnecticutGenealogy.org and the Internet Archive.

Connecticut marriage and death records are open to the public, but birth records less than 100 years old are restricted — available only to the person, immediate family, or a member of a genealogical society incorporated in Connecticut. A fee applies. After 1897 the Connecticut Department of Public Health holds copies, while the town clerk holds the originals and is often the quicker source.

History and Timeline of Major Events

Key dates that shaped Connecticut's jurisdictions and records:

• 1614 — Adriaen Block explores the Connecticut River for the Dutch.
• 1633–1636 — English settlers found the river towns of Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford.
• 1636 — Thomas Hooker leads the settlement of Hartford, and the Connecticut Colony takes shape.
• 1636–1638 — The Pequot War.
• 1638 — The separate New Haven Colony is founded.
• 1639 — The Fundamental Orders are adopted as a frame of government.
• 1662 — The royal Charter unites New Haven with Connecticut and confirms the colony's wide, sea-to-sea land claims.
• 1666 — The first four counties are created, and the first probate district is established at Hartford.
• 1687 — The Charter Oak incident, when the charter is famously hidden from a royal governor.
• 1701–1875 — Hartford and New Haven serve as joint capitals.
• 1785 — The last two counties, Middlesex and Tolland, are created.
• 1786–1800 — Connecticut cedes its western claims but keeps the Western Reserve in Ohio, sets aside the Firelands in 1792, and sells the Reserve to the Connecticut Land Company, ceding jurisdiction to the United States in 1800.
• January 9, 1788 — Connecticut ratifies the U.S. Constitution as the fifth state.
• 1818 — A new state constitution disestablishes the Congregational Church.
• 1875 — Hartford becomes the sole capital.
• 1897 — Statewide filing of vital records begins.
• 1960 — County government is abolished.

Census Records and Substitutes

Federal censuses were taken every ten years from 1790 through 1950, and Connecticut appears in all of them, including a surviving 1790 schedule; the 1890 federal census was destroyed nationally. Connecticut never took a state census, so census substitutes carry unusual weight for filling the gaps between federal years and reaching back before 1790. The censuses are free on FamilySearch and searchable on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($).

• The Barbour and Hale collections (described under Vital Records) are the leading substitutes for the colonial and early-statehood periods.
• City directories, church records, tax and rate lists, and freemen lists place a family in a town and year where censuses are missing.
• Colonial name lists reconstruct the pre-1790 population; a compiled 1670 census gathers tax, land, church, and freeman records into a head-of-household list for that era.
• The Connecticut Military Census, 1917 ($) enumerated the state's men during the First World War and is a valuable early-twentieth-century substitute, with a related military questionnaire.

Church Records

The Congregational Church was the established, tax-supported church of Connecticut until 1818, so its registers of baptisms, marriages, and admissions are among the most important substitutes for civil vital records before the late 1800s; Episcopal (Anglican), Baptist, and later Roman Catholic records also matter. The Connecticut State Library holds a large collection of original and copied church records with a church-records index.

• The Connecticut Church Record Abstracts, 1630–1920 ($) — the abstracts of hundreds of Connecticut church registers, drawn from the Connecticut State Library collection.
• Connecticut, Church Records, 1660–1955 — free on FamilySearch.
• Early Congregational registers from the State Archives are also being digitized and published through the Congregational Library and Archives.

Court Records

Connecticut's courts reach well beyond lawsuits into estates, naturalizations, divorces, and name changes, and the system grew from a single colonial court into county and statewide courts. The main courts a researcher encounters are:

• The Particular Court and the Court of Assistants, in the colonial period — the earliest general courts of the colony.
• The County Courts, 1666–1855 — the main trial courts of the counties, whose records include civil and criminal cases, naturalizations, and much else.
• The Superior Court and, in time, the modern trial courts — which took over the counties' work and handle divorces and naturalizations.

The Connecticut State Library holds the county court and Superior Court records and the manuscript collection known as the "Connecticut Archives," a major source for the colonial and early state periods.

Ethnic/Minority Records

Connecticut has been home to Native nations since before European settlement and to waves of immigrants since, and knowing where a group settled points to the records most likely to document a family.

• Native peoples. The Pequot (today the Mashantucket Pequot and the Eastern Pequot), the Mohegan, the Schaghticoke, and the Golden Hill Paugussett hold reservations and long histories in the state. The Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center is the leading repository, and the Native Northeast Research Collaborative brings together colonial Indian records, court records, and land records with transcriptions.
• African Americans. People of African descent have lived in Connecticut since the colonial period, first under slavery and then under a gradual-emancipation law of 1784; the Amistad case in New Haven in 1839–1841 became a landmark in the antislavery movement. Church records, the Barbour and Hale collections, and Connecticut newspapers help document early Black families.
• Immigrant communities. Irish, Italian, Polish, French-Canadian, and Jewish immigrants filled Connecticut's mill and factory towns in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Naturalization records, church registers, and ethnic societies such as the Polish Genealogical Society of Connecticut and the Northeast are the key sources.

Immigration and Naturalization

Connecticut's own ports — New London, New Haven, and Bridgeport — were minor, and most immigrants who settled in the state arrived through New York or Boston, so naturalization records rather than passenger lists are usually the key to an immigrant ancestor. Before 1906 naturalization was handled in the state and county courts, whose records are largely at the Connecticut State Library; from 1906 it moved to the federal district courts at Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport.

• The Connecticut Federal Naturalization Records, 1790–1996 ($) index covers the federal courts, and FamilySearch offers free Connecticut naturalization records and district-court indexes.
• The Connecticut State Library holds a statewide naturalization index and the earlier state and county court naturalizations, and the National Archives at Boston holds the federal naturalizations.

Land Records

Connecticut is a state-land state, so there are no federal land records; instead, original title flowed from the colony to the towns, and the towns granted land to proprietors and settlers. Once granted, land passed by deed recorded at the town level, and Connecticut town land records reach back to the 1600s, making them among the earliest deeds in America.

Where the records are kept.

• Town level: deeds and mortgages are recorded by the town clerk in each of the state's towns, and the proprietors' records of the original town land divisions are held by the towns or the Connecticut State Library.
• Connecticut State Library: the "Connecticut Archives: Towns and Lands" manuscript collection documents the colony's grants and boundary disputes.

The western land claims. Under its sea-to-sea charter, Connecticut claimed and disposed of large tracts far beyond its modern borders, and families who left the state often followed that land west.

• The Connecticut Western Reserve: after ceding its other western claims in 1786, Connecticut kept a strip of roughly three and a third million acres in northeastern Ohio ("New Connecticut"), sold it to the Connecticut Land Company in 1795, and applied the proceeds to the state's School Fund, ceding jurisdiction to the United States in 1800.
• The Firelands (Sufferers' Lands): half a million acres at the western end of the Reserve were set aside in 1792 to compensate the inhabitants of Danbury, Fairfield, Greenwich, Groton, New Haven, New London, Norwalk, and Ridgefield whose homes had been burned by British raids during the Revolution.
• The Susquehanna Company: from 1753 Connecticut settlers claimed and settled the Wyoming Valley of northeastern Pennsylvania under the same charter, touching off the Pennamite–Yankee Wars before the land was awarded to Pennsylvania in 1782.

Online, FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed Connecticut deeds and land records searchable by every name they contain, including grantors, grantees, witnesses, and neighbors.

Military Records

Connecticut took part in every American conflict from the earliest colonial wars onward, and its published rolls and the holdings of the Connecticut State Library make its soldiers unusually well documented.

• Colonial wars: the Pequot War of 1637, King Philip's War of 1675–1676, and the later French and Indian wars are documented in colonial records and in the printed Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society.
• Revolutionary War: Connecticut was known as the Provisions State for its supplies to the Continental Army; the Record of Service of Connecticut Men in the War of the Revolution, War of 1812, and Mexican War and the companion rolls of Connecticut men in the Revolution are free on the Internet Archive.
• Civil War: the Adjutant General's Catalogue of Connecticut Volunteer Organizations and Record of Service of Connecticut Men list the state's regiments and soldiers, with free service records on FamilySearch and Fold3.
• Spanish–American War and First World War: the state published a record of Connecticut men in the Spanish-American War, and First World War research draws on the federal draft registrations together with the 1917 Connecticut Military Census and the state's military questionnaires.

The Connecticut State Library holds the militia and service records, orderly books, and the Civil War records.

Probate Records

Probate — wills, administrations of intestate estates, guardianships of minors, and distributions of property — is among the richest sources for family relationships, and in Connecticut it follows a distinctive geography: probate is handled by probate district, not by county. The first district was Hartford, established in 1666, and as the population grew the districts multiplied, each covering one or more towns, so the essential first step is to determine which probate district a town belonged to in a given period.

• The estate file — petition, will or administration, inventory, bond, and distribution — usually names the surviving family, making it the single most valuable probate record.
• The Connecticut State Library holds the probate estate papers for the districts, together with a probate estate-papers index and a general index to the probate records of all Connecticut districts.

Online, Connecticut Wills and Probate Records, 1609–1999 ($) is name-searchable across the districts, the early probate records are on American Ancestors ($), and FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed wills and estate files searchable by every name they contain.

Tax Records

Tax lists place a family in a specific town and year and are valuable substitutes where censuses or deeds are missing; several consecutive years can reveal when a young man came of age, acquired property, moved, or died and left heirs.

• Town rate lists and grand lists — the colonial and state property-tax lists kept by the towns — together with the freemen lists, are held by the town clerks and, for many towns, by the Connecticut State Library.
• U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862–1918 ($) — Civil War–era and later federal income, license, and luxury taxes, including the Connecticut assessment districts; the 1862–1866 Connecticut lists are also free on FamilySearch.