Find your ancestors in United States, Connecticut Town Vitals, The Barbour Collection indexes

What can these records tell me?

This collection comprises 55 volumes of The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records. Within these records, you can discover vital information about your ancestor, such as marriage and death details. You may learn who performed your ancestor’s wedding. Perhaps the Reverend John Davenport, the co-founder of New Haven, married your ancestors. The records offer insight into the early inhabitants of Connecticut. For example, you can find one of the governors of the Connecticut Colony, Thomas Fitch. He is listed with his wife, Hannah Hall.

Results will provide you with a transcript and an image of the source material. Each transcript will vary in the amount of detail provided but most will provide the following:

  • First name(s)
  • Last name
  • Sex
  • Age
  • Birth year
  • Residence year
  • Migration year
  • Principal’s first name(s)
  • Principal’s last name
  • Relationship
  • Spouse’s first name(s)
  • Spouse’s last name
  • Father’s first name(s)
  • Father’s last name
  • Mother’s first name(s)
  • Mother’s last name
  • Event type
  • Event year
  • Event date
  • Town

The images may be able to provide you with additional details.

Discover more about these records

As explained in the introduction of these volumes, 'General Lucius Barnes Barbour was the Connecticut Examiner of Public Records from 1911 to 1934 and in that capacity directed a project in which the vital records kept by the towns up to about 1850 were copied and abstracted. […] For this new project he hired several individuals who were experienced in copying old records and familiar with the old script'.

The Barbour Collection in its entirety covers 137 towns and includes 14,333 typed pages. The year range covered varies from town to town, and some towns provided greater details than others.

Abbreviations used in this collection include

  • ae. – age
  • b. – born, birth
  • bd. – buried
  • bp. – baptized
  • B.G. – burying ground
  • d. – died, day, or daughter
  • decd. – deceased
  • f. – father
  • h. – hour
  • J.P. – Justice of Peace
  • m. – married or month
  • res. – resident
  • s. – son
  • st. – stillborn
  • TM – town meeting
  • V.D.M. – Voluns Dias (minister, one who serves God)
  • w. – wife
  • wid. – widow
  • wk. – week
  • y. – year

Please note that an individual may appear multiple times in the records. This is due, in part, to instances where multiple names were recorded for a given entry, such as a husband’s name appearing in his wife’s entry and the wife’s name appearing in the husband’s entry.