Connecticut County Listings - Counties were abolished officially in 1959 though their purpose had been chiefly to define county court districts. For genealogical research purposes, counties become necessary when using the federal census returns, since they are all cataloged by county. Connecticut's original four counties had become eight counties by the time of the first federal census in 1790. Keep in mind some towns on the borders crossed county jurisdictions for different census enumerations
In the list of town offices, the town clerk has town meeting, vital records, and land records. If the address specifies “city” or “town,” the official in charge of the records is the city or municipal clerk. The Town Establisment page indicates the date the town was incorporated and the parent town or towns; dashes (——) indicate that the town was not original but was formed from unorganized land rather than another town. Some seventeenth-century towns were settled or organized a year or two before incorporation. The third column lists the present county, which can be used for census identification and superior court records. For earlier probate divisions see Probate Records section.
All deeds, vital records, and probate records for all Connecticut towns are available to 1900 on microfilm at the Connecticut State Library or through the FHL. Town meeting records are not automatically included in the microfilms
If you Cannot use, activate or see the map below then use the County Selection Table to select a County
Connecticut State History -Connecticut, one of the six New England states, in the northeastern United States. Connecticut was the fifth of the original 13 states ratifying the Constitution of the United States on January 9, 1788, and it played an important role in the development of the United States. Settlement in Connecticut dates from the 1630s and many of the state’s modern towns and cities can trace their origins back to the 17th or 18th century. Hartford is the capital of Connecticut and the center of the state’s largest metropolitan area. Bridgeport is the state’s largest city.
Rural Connecticut retains much of the charm of colonial New England. It is an area of churches with white steeples, charming colonial homes that face elm-shaded streets, and village greens where once, perhaps, the local militia trained for the Continental Army. However, modern Connecticut is principally an urban and suburban residential state. Many of the nation’s early industrial advances, including the development of mass production, first took place in Connecticut. Cities and towns in the state were identified by the products they produced—hats in Danbury, brass in Waterbury, thread in Colchester. Although the economy today is decreasing its reliance on manufacturing, becoming instead more diverse and service-based, the state remains an important producer of such products as electronic equipment, aircraft engines, and spacecraft equipment.
The name Connecticut is probably derived from a Native American word, Quinnehtukqut, meaning “beside the long tidal river.” The state’s official nickname, adopted in 1959, is the Constitution State, chosen to commemorate the colony’s adoption in 1639 of the Fundamental Orders, sometimes regarded as the first written constitution. Among its numerous unofficial nicknames are the Nutmeg State, an unflattering reference to the reputed attempts of Yankee peddlers from Connecticut to sell wooden nutmegs in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Arsenal of the Nation, a reference to Connecticut’s role as a major supplier of weapons in the American Revolution (1775-1783) and other wars. The Official State Website is http://www.ct.gov/
The first colonies that would become Connecticut flanked the shores of Long Island Sound and the banks of the Housatonic and Connecticut Rivers. Influenced by Rev. Thomas Hooker's principle of authority growing out of the free expression of its people, the utopian experiment of Connecticut Colony, begun in 1636, produced little class distinction, a change from the heavy-handed authoritarian expectations of the Massachusetts colonies. The Congregational church would not only be thoroughly integrated in town life, but interpretation of its theology seemed to create less social stratification.
Similar to Rhode Island in its political organization, Connecticut differed from the new settlements in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in possessing a rich agricultural terrain. First settlements along the Connecticut River, co-existing with the Native Americans and Dutch at a trading post at what is now Windsor and Hartford, were reached primarily on foot by settlers from Massachusetts towns. Concurrently, John Winthrop, Jr., brought a group of more notable settlers from England to establish Saybrook along the coast. By 1638, with other settlements already harvesting their crops and increasing their number of clapboard houses, New Haven Colony, under the theological leadership of John Davenport, entrenched itself along the coast building the more elaborate houses they had become accustomed to in England.
New Haven Colony merged with Connecticut Colony in 1662 while others, dissatisfied, moved farther north on the Connecticut River to settle western Massachusetts towns, and one group founded Newark, New Jersey. More and more of the rich agricultural land was purchased from the Native Americans, but through the middle of the eighteenth century, Connecticut's, as well as the rest of New England's, relationship with the original inhabitants deteriorated as the French and Indian wars heated up and persisted.
Connecticut's homogeneous, community centered form of government, out of the mainstream of royal imperial affairs, remained focused on the town and its people. With events of the impending Revolution espousing the principles of freedom of expression, Connecticut began to move away from a solely town focus and look out toward the broader community of colonies opposing Royal authority. Connecticut people fought on both sides of the conflict, with many Loyalists migrating north and east to Canada and its eastern provinces.
By the end of the Revolution family farms were unable to support the large number of young people in the area. The population boom made it necessary for more and more descendants of original settlers to leave for the north, west, and south to provide for themselves and their families. Cheaper, available land elsewhere provided much of the motivation. Farms gave way to the newly burgeoning Industrial Revolution, and new ethnic groups wended their ways along the Long Island Shoreline of Connecticut's growing metropolitan areas.
Connecticut County Selection Table - Select a county from the table below to to view more information on genealogical information & records pertaining to each county.
