Connecticut Town Records

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Town Records

Connecticut

Town Records

In New England the town clerk is the principal record keeper on the local level. The earliest records are called proprietors' records.

Town records in Connecticut have more than births, marriages, deaths. They often contain burials, cemetery records, appointments, earmarks, estrays (stray animals), freemens' oaths (men eligible to vote), land records, mortgages, name changes, care of the poor, school records, surveys, tax lists, town meeting minutes, voter registrations, and "warnings out" (of town).

Town records generally begin with the founding of the town and are kept to the present. Many of the original town records are in the town clerks' offices. Some are at the Connecticut State Library.

An excellent inventory of Connecticut local records is Volume 2, pp. 53-127 of Nelson P. Mead, "Public Archives of Connecticut: County, Probate, and Local Records," in Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1906 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1908; FS Library book 973 C4ah; film 896557).

The FamilySearch Library has digitized microfilms (browsable online) of many Connecticut town records from the creation of the town to the early 1920s. To find these, use the FamilySearch Catalog Place-names search for a particular town.