AGBI: (American Genealogical and Biographical Index) Godfrey Memorial Library founder Fremont Rider’s version of Who’s Who, but for the 17th through 19th centuries. A 226-volume index covering more than 4 million names from the more than 800 books in the original Godfrey collection, as well as genealogy query columns which ran in the Boston Evening Transcript from 1896 to 1941.

Bible Records: Family Bible records, both transcribed and OCR’d. Jacqueline Ladd Ricker Collection culled from DAR magazines, and Bibles in the Godfrey Library’s print collection being transcribed by volunteers.

Biographies: Roughly 300 full-text historical biographies, plus Presidents and Pie…, the Tyler Family and the Salem Witchcraft Trials, and two history/biographical collections on Middlesex County, CT.

Cemeteries: Includes the Ed Laput Cemetery Collection, a database of every gravestone in 1055 Connecticut cemeteries and 37 in other states, fully indexed and with photos. Also burial records and permits, Sexton’s records, cemetery and headstone transcriptions, some in spreadsheet form, some handwritten. Towns covered include Middletown, Glastenbury [sic], Northford, and New London County. Also the Cohen-Goldfarb collection of Jewish cemeteries in New Haven, Hartford, Rhode Island and Western Massachusetts with names of all deceased as well as specific locations of graves.

Church Records: Handwritten record books from churches in Middletown, Haddam Neck, Middle Haddam, Cromwell, Groton, South Killingly, North Stonington, Voluntown, Sterling and Waterford. Indexed. Jeffersonville, Indiana record book includes some info about weddings, funerals, and baptisms from Cromwell and Wethersfield, Conn.

Directories: City directories from Boston, Chicago, Middletown & Portland, Hartford, Manhattan & the Bronx. Also a farm directory covering four New York counties. Excerpts from a run of Geer’s Hartford Directories from 1850 to the mid 1860’s – only the pages listing “Colored persons.”

External Databases: Premium members receive free home access to these databases as part of their Scholar membership.

Foreign: Links to online sources of information on countries outside the U.S.

Funeral Home Records: Records from six funeral homes in Middletown, New Britain and Southington. Some are handwritten and have been indexed, others are typed and are in alphabetical order. Dates vary, from the 1880’s through the 1950’s.

Genealogies: Over two hundred full-text digitized genealogies from the Godfrey, a dozen family charts, and some early 20th century genealogy periodicals. Includes a 2-volume collection of genealogies of Families of Ancient New Haven compiled by Donald Lines Jacobus. Also a four-volume collection of family histories in the state of Connecticut – index in volume four.

Godfrey Collection: Thousands of books from the Godfrey print collection, fully digitized. Search by a name or phrase, or browse the list to click on the title(s) that interest you.

Helpful Websites: Our librarians and research volunteers have compiled 8600 links to websites that are helpful in researching history, biography, and genealogy within the United States. The links are organized by state, and within each state by category. Please let us know if you discover any broken links.

Immigration: Gale’s Passenger and Immigration List Index – a searchable index to over five million names of immigrants to the New World between the late 1500’s and mid-20th century.

Maps: A collection of miscellaneous maps of interest. Also the Columbia Gazetteer database.

Military: Material is grouped by war (Revolutionary, Civil and Spanish-American), then general titles, and then by state. State muster rolls for the Revolution are available for Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and Vermont. State regimental histories/muster rolls for the Civil War can be found for Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

Newspapers: Several online databases including 19th Century (U.S.) Newspapers and London Times Digital Archive (1785-2006). Also a very useful link to Websites by State-look for the “newspapers” column. Also extracts from New Jersey newspapers in Colonial and Revolutionary War years, as they appear in the New Jersey Archives.

People of Color: Manumission records for Virginia and Middletown, CT; essays about slavery in Middletown; lists of [free] people of color from Hartford, CT Directories from 1848, 1850-1866.

State and Local Histories: County or statewide histories organized by state. States included are Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Texas. Some states only have one resource while Connecticut and Massachusetts have fairly extensive state, county and city books listed.

Vital Records: Includes digitized printed books as well as handwritten record collections for towns in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Massachusetts towns include Kingston, Norton, Taunton, Woburn, Wrentham, Weston and Boston. Connecticut towns covered are Wallingford, Wolcott, New Haven, Norwich, Woodstock, Haddam and East Haddam (the Brooks Collection). The following towns have vital records that appeared in city directories: Winsted/Torrington (1890-1), New Haven (1888-1896), Middletown/Portland (1887-1897) and Hartford (1882-1926). Also from Virginia, Freedom by Deed, Manumission, Freedom and Emancipation Abstracts 1752-1862.