Source:Connecticut, United States. Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records

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Source

The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records

Coverage

Place	Connecticut, United States New Haven Colony Connecticut (colony), Kingdom of England Fairfield, Connecticut, United States Hartford, Connecticut, United States Litchfield, Connecticut, United States Middlesex, Connecticut, United States New Haven, Connecticut, United States New London, Connecticut, United States Tolland, Connecticut, United States Windham, Connecticut, United States Lyme, New London, Connecticut, United States Stonington, New London, Connecticut, United States
Year range	- 1850
Subject	Vital records

Publication information

Type	Government / Church records
Number of Volumes	55 Town Volumes

Citation

Connecticut, United States. The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records.

Repositories

New England Historic Genealogical Society	Hard copy	Family history center
Connecticut State Library	Hard copy	Archive/Library
DUNHAM - WILCOX - TROTT - KIRK	Main Index	Free website
FamilySearch	FamilySearch Catalog	Family history center
Family History Center	FamilySearch Catalog Original slips	Family history center
Ancestry.com	Connecticut Town Births	Paid website
Ancestry.com	Connecticut Town Marriages	Paid website
Ancestry.com	Connecticut Town Deaths	Paid website
AmericanAncestors.org	https://www.americanancestors.org/databases/conn..	Paid website

Featured Page: Week of April 20, 2009

1 Usage Tips
- 1.1 Statewide Slip Index/Abstract
- 1.2 Index Volumes
2 Online Access

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Usage Tips

The Barbour Collection consists of births, marriages, and deaths recorded at the town level in Connecticut up through approximately 1850. In the 1910s and 1920s, Lucius Barnes Barbour (Connecticut Examiner of Public Records, 1911–1934) and his team of researchers transcribed the records held at the town level. Those transcriptions were returned to the Connecticut State Library, which transcribed the records onto slips and then into bound volumes by town. Thus, there are two parts of the Barbour Collection: the slip index, and bound volumes for individual towns.

A summary of how the Barbour collection was compiled and how to use it can be found on the AmericanAncestors.org website.

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Statewide Slip Index/Abstract

Each slip contains the information found in the original birth, marriage or death record, as well as a citation to the original. They are arranged alphabetically then chronologically in drawers at the Connecticut State Library. They were also filmed by the Family History Library. Film numbers can be found here

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Index Volumes

Bound volumes were prepared for each town from the slips, containing the same information. Records are combined under one spelling per surname rather than preserving the original as on the slips. Because they represent a transcription of the slips themselves, there is the possibility of errors introduced that do not appear on the slips. Bound volumes were not prepared for the towns of Bolton, Coventry, Enfield, Mansfield, New Haven, Norwich, and Vernon since published compilations of vital records had previously been prepared for these towns. However, these towns are included in the statewide slip index.

Town volumes were also (re)published by Genealogical Publishing in 1994-2002, and can be purchased online.

The Town Volumes are available in hard copy at the Connecticut State Library and NEHGS.
They are available on microfilm at the Family History Center (see film notes here)
The records and other Connecticut records are available together on CD-Rom as The Ricker Compilation of Vital Records of Early Connecticut

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Online Access

Many of the records have been transcribed and put online for free access.

Both Dunham-Wilcox-Trott and CT GenWeb are frequently updated and worth checking if a town is not listed below.

As indicated in the repository list above, Ancestry.com has put most (but not all) of the towns together into statewide databases for births, marriages, and deaths.

AmericanAncestors.org has put a collection of all the records together in one database. (They also maintain a list of other Connecticut town resources here.)

The following list shows the volume numbers and town sections as published by the Genealogical Publishing Company with links to free online transcriptions if known. Additions welcome.

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