This Week on the Scholar

This week we added quite the variety of records to the Scholar.  It won't be long before we can say that our backlog of scanned books is no more! Most of these records come come from Connecticut in the 1800s and early 1900s, so if your ancestors lived in Connecticut around that time these new works are well worth a look.  It won't be long before we can say our backlog of scanned books is no more!  Don't forget to check back next week to see what new books we've added.

Biography
Incidents in the Life of Arba Lankton*

Church Records
Northford, CT Congregational Church Reports of the Annual Meetings, 1949-1956*

Directories
Geers Hartford, CT City Directory: Record of Colored Persons 1850-1866*
Wells Hartford, CT City Directory: Record of Colored Persons 1848*

Funeral Home Records
Roberts Funeral Home Records 1952-1955

Genealogies
Family of Roland Wayne Lee*

Vital Records
Vital Records from Hartford City Directories: 1882-1926*
Vital Records from Middletown and Portland Directories: 1887-1897*
Vital Records from Winstead and Torrington Directories: 1890-1891*

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Another Major Milestone Reached!

We did it!  We now have 1000 digitized books on Godfrey Scholar⁺!

Over the last year we've added:

• 293 Biographies

• 132 volumes of original Funeral Home Records from 1882 to 1980 including records from the Hallahan Funeral Home featured in the movie A Haunting in Connecticut

• 234 Genealogies

• 146 volumes pertaining to the Revolutionary, Civil and Spanish American Wars including regimental histories and biographies of officers and soldiers 

• 86 State and Local Histories for 11 states and New England

• 68 volumes of original Church Records in 9 different Connecticut towns, Indiana, NY and Italy from 1668 to 1908

• 20 published volumes of Vital Records for Connecticut and Massachusetts and 42 volumes of original records including a record book kept by a midwife from Melilli Italy of babies born in Middletown, an account book of deaths in Wallingford from 1827 to 1900, Wolcott CT vital records (1783-1849) found among land records and not included in Barbour's, and multiple volumes of transcriptions from church and vital records by Lillian Kruger Brooks of Haddam Neck and surrounding towns for her own research

• 13 volumes of New Jersey Archives Newspaper Extracts, 1704-1782

• 11 volumes of original Cemetery Records (sexton returns, gravestone inscriptions and burial returns) from 7 different Connecticut towns

Keep following us on Facebook and our blog "Genealogy from the Godfrey" for weekly updates on new Scholar content.  

This Week on the Scholar

We have quite the eclectic mix of additions to the Scholar this week!  Of particular note are records from the now closed Roberts Funeral Home in Middletown, Connecticut.  The current owners of the records, the Doolittle Funeral Home, gave the Godfrey exclusive permission to host the records on the Scholar, so you will not find them anywhere else. 



Biographies
Mrs. Leicester's School
Prison Life and Reflections: Alanson Work, James Burr, and George Thompson
Samuel Sewell: The World he Lived In
Frederick Seward: Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman
William Henry Seward: American Statesman
Work of William Seward Vol. 1
William Sharp: Memoir Vol. 1
William Sharp: Memoir Vol. 2
Memorial Addresses of James Schoolcraft Sherman
Memoir of H.B. Soule
Memorials of Joseph Sumner

Church Records
Portland, CT, Evangelical Lutheran Zion Church Record Book 1872-1888
Portland, CT, Evangelical Lutheran Zion Church Record Book 1888-1903

Foreign
A Significant Emigration Introduction
A Significant Emigration Vol. 12



Funeral Home
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1941-42
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1943
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1944
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1945
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1946
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1947
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1948
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1949
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1950

Genealogies
Seldens of Virginia and Allied Families
Memorials of the Descendants of William Shattuck
Sprague Family Memorial
Stiles Family in America
Symmes Memorial

Military: Civil War
Nurse and Spy in the Union Army: Emma Edmonds

State and Local Histories
Early History of New England

Iowa

Iowa Historical Record: July, 1890 Iowa Historical Record: January, 1891 Iowa Historical Record: October, 1891 Iowa Historical Record: April, 1892 Iowa Historical Record: July, 1892 Iowa Historical Record: January, 1893 Iowa Historical Record: April, 1893 Iowa Historical Record: July, 1893 Iowa Historical Record: October, 1893 Massachusetts Indian Names and Places in Worcester County Worcester County MA Warnings 1737-1788 Pennsylvania Reminiscences of the Early History of Scranton Vital Records: Massachusetts Abstracts of Early Woburn Deeds 1649-1700 Woburn Records 1640-1873: Part 2 Deaths Woburn Records 1640-1873: Part 3 Marriages

 Not a Scholar?  Visit our website to subscribe or call the library at (860) 346-4375 to join today.

Volunteer Highlight: Wendy Berlind and the Ed Laput Cemetery Project

Interested in Volunteering?  Read this volunteer's story to learn about interesting projects you can help with.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the Godfrey could not function without our dedicated volunteers.  From greeting patrons and helping them find their ancestors in our resources to adding books and documents to the Scholar+ Online Library, volunteers are essential in nearly every aspect of our operation.  Wendy Berlind is one such volunteer who began offering her services at Godfrey in 2011 when she retired after 30 years of teaching.  She has worked on indexing information from a number of our collections to make it searchable online.

Wendy has worked on the Ed Laput Cemetery project from the beginning, typing information from the Charles Hale Collection of Connecticut Cemetery Inscriptions (a record of headstone inscriptions from every Connecticut cemetery that existed in 1932) to be used in creating the searchable database we provide on Godfrey Scholar⁺.  The Cemetery Project appeals to Wendy because she can work on it from home, allowing for greater time flexibility.  She typically takes on a single cemetery at a time, typing all the names and appropriate data from the Hale into excel spreadsheets.  The amount of data she types varies from cemetery to cemetery.  Inscriptions for a cemetery she is currently working on take up more than 100 pages of Hale.  At approximately 30 headstones per page she will be adding about 3000 entries to our cemetery project database. 

While time consuming, Wendy enjoys spending her spare moments working on the project. The tidbits of information she learns from the headstone inscriptions help her to imagine the lives of people whose names she is preserving.  One cemetery had a staggering number of children and young women, illustrating  how precarious life was for our early ancestors.  She also discovers stories in burials of family groups which may show a number of children dying in infancy, remarriages, or longtime widowhood.  Sometimes inscriptions carry a message, a place of birth or indication of relationship.

Wendy has found equally fascinating information when she has indexed church records for us.  Often these contain causes of death such as phthisis, dropsy, and old age.  Once in awhile there are unusual or suspicious reasons for deaths.  Unique to one  Middletown church, there were a large number of people who drowned in the nearby Connecticut River.  "Negro servants", their families and the families they worked for are documented in these records and possibly nowhere else.   Wendy says the fact that this is all local history makes it that much more interesting and intimate.

Wendy's interest in genealogy began when she was young, visiting a family home in New Hampshire every summer which was filled with artifacts that belonged to her ancestors.  Her grandmother readily told stories about the family members in pictures and to whom some of those artifacts belonged.  Since then she has always loved collecting and preserving family history.  She had the good fortune to have older relatives who were also avid genealogists and were happy to pass their research on to her.  One aunt in particular was an incredible researcher who loved genealogy and, even before the advent of the internet and digital research, was able to find a huge amount of information.



Wendy Berlind and her quilt showing five generations of her family.

Wendy combines her love of genealogy and quilting to make unique family heirlooms.  The first was a present for her husband's father, a quilt that included pictures of his family.  In February, she created this wonderful piece.  Eschewing the traditional family tree motif, Wendy instead showcased five generations of her and her husband's family on a five shelf bookcase, using 
family photos and symbolic decorations for each 
generation. 

This Week on the Scholar

It has been another great week for adding content to the Scholar!  This will most likely be the last large installment of new genealogies and biographies added to the Scholar from our current backlog.  There will certainly still be more, but they will be interspersed with a little more variety as well.  Next week you can look forward to a set of history books from Iowa as well as much more!

We are also very pleased to announce that the Midwife Records of Sebastiana Misenti from Middletown and Ansonia Connecticut have been completely indexed!  These indexes are available on the Scholar and the records are now completely searchable searchable!  Sebastiana was the go to midwife for Italian immigrants from Mellili Italy who lived in Middletown and Ansonia Connecticut.  If you have Italian ancestors from the area they are well worth a look! 

Biographies
A Memorial of William Rice*
Sketch of the Life and Public Services of William Richardson*
Pen-Portraits: A Collection of Personal and Political Reminiscences by William S Robinson*
An Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt*
Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography*
Theodore Roosevelt and His Time Vol. 1*
The Man As I Knew Him: Theodore Roosevelt*
Memorial of Horace William Rose*
Papers of Thomas Ruffin Vol. 1-4*
William Goodwin Russell*
Memorials of John Towill Rutt*
Memorial of Stephen Salisbury*
Recollections of Seventy Years by F.B. Sanborn*
Memoirs of the Life of Nathaniel Stacy*
III Score and X or Selections, Collections, Recollections of  Seventy Busy Years by Silas Comfort Swallow*

Genealogies
Perkins Arms in England*
Reynolds Family Association: 12th Annual Reunion*
Reynold Family Association 15th Annual Reunion*
Roberts Family of Simsbury CT*
Robinson Family Genealogical and Historical Association*
Genealogical Memoir of Nathaniel Rogers*
Ropers of Sterling and Rutland*
Ryerson Genealogy*
Genealogical Record of the Descendants of David Sage*
Sampson Family in America: Genealogical Memoirs*
Stanleys of Knowsley*
Yeager, Buffington, Creighton, Jacobs, Lemon, Hoffman, and Woodside Families: A Brief History*

Vital Records
 Index for the Midwife Records of Sebastiana Misenti from Middletown and Ansonia Connecticut*

 Not a Scholar?  Visit our website to subscribe or call the library at (860) 346-4375 to join today.

*Searchable

Please Consider Donating to the Godfrey's Annual Fund

It's fall.  Here in New England, that means getting out the winter clothes, bringing in the plants, stacking the firewood.  Some of us carry on the tradition of canning and putting up preserves.

 

As I go through this yearly ritual, I am reminded of going with my grandmother to check on her root cellar, a climate controlled, secure space filled with squash, pumpkins and other root vegetables.  It was like discovering treasure.  All winter long these vegetables would stay fresh because they were chosen and cared for in a special way.

 

It occurs to me that in many ways Godfrey is like a giant "root cellar" filled with books and documents, containing treasured information, preserved to help genealogists find their roots.      

A lot of time, effort and money goes into maintaining the library and our prized collection.  Our work now requires increased technology expertise and equipment as we continue to make materials available to our remote patrons.  We are especially proud of how much we added to our Godfrey Scholar online access this year. (see below for a list)

 

Please consider making a gift to the Godfrey Annual Fund.  We receive no public funding.  We thrive on the day to day efforts of our volunteers and donations from patrons like you.  Your contribution goes directly to the care and maintenance of the library and our collection.

-Beth Mariotti, Executive Director

For information on donating the the Annual Fund please contact the library at 860-346-4375.

Content added to Godfrey Scholar over the last year

 

AGBI

All 226 volumes of the AGBI organized alphabetically by surname and Finding Aids which can be used to determine the abbreviated citations and link right to the digital books on the Scholar.    

• more than 4 million names from over 800 books from our original collection and

• more than 2 million records from the Boston Transcript weekly genealogy column

Cemeteries
157 cemeteries with 45,880 burials listed

Funeral Home Records

31,322 records from index cards and 93 volumes from five funeral homes spanning 1882-1974

Church Records

28 volumes of Connecticut church record books containing 12,195 baptisms, marriages, deaths and admissions from 1668 to 1874

Vital Records

15797 Central Connecticut vital records entries from early 1700s to 1900

Digital Books

534 total new books browsable in page viewer and searchable

139 books previously on the Scholar were converted from PDF format to the page viewer and made searchable

This Week on the Scholar

We hope everyone had a happy and safe Halloween this year!  Over the holiday weekend we added more biographies and a few more genealogies to the Scholar.  If you've been following our blog you also know we've finally indexed the church records in our collection from Congregational churches in Groton, Voluntown, Sterling, and Waterford.  We are working on indexing more funeral records from the Doolittle funeral home and also on scanning records from the Roberts Funeral Home from the 1940s!  Look for these new records in the upcoming weeks!

Biographies
Diary of Ebenezer Parkman*
Journey to Arant by Friedrich Parrot*
Life and Character of Cornelius R. Parsons*
Memorial Addresses of Sereno Elisha Payne*
Tina and her Husband Salvatore Pennuto*
Memorial Addresses on James Breck Perkins*
Memorial of John D Philbrick*
Andrew Wheeler Phillips*
Life of Timothy Pickering Vol. 1*
Life Romance of an Algebraist: George Winslow Pierce*
Memorial Addresses on Austin Pike*
Sketch of the Life of Samuels F. Pratt*
Life of William Hickling Prscott*
My Day, Reminsicences of a Long Life by Mrs. Roger A. Pryor*
Israel Putnam*
Life of William Quarter*
Life and Correspondence of John A. Quitman Vol. 1*
Life and Correspondence of John A. Quitman Vol.  2*
American Statesmen John Randolph*
Memoirs of Robert Rantoul Jr.*
Memorial of Alexander Hamilton Rice*
Memorial Addresses on John B. Rice*
Life Work of Cora L.V. Richmond*
Memoirs of Major General Riedesel Vol. 1*
Memoirs of Major General Riedesel Vol. 2*
American Men of Letters: George Ripley*
John Codman Ropes*
Memorial of Horace William Rose*

Genealogies
Paine Ancestry*
Penn Family of Virginia*
Pepys Family Genealogy*
Ancestry of John Pratt*
Prentice of Prentiss Family History and Genealogy*
Genealogical Memoir of the Prescott Families in America*
Preston Family of Willington, CT*
Quinby Family Genealogical History*
Robert Randall and his Descendants*
Robinsons, Saffords, Harwoods, and Clarks Genealogical History*
Genealogical Memoir of Nathaniel Rogers*
Runnels and Reynolds Families Genealogy*
Rutherford and Darwin Genealogy*

Not a Scholar?  Visit our website to subscribe or call the library at (860) 346-4375 to join today.

*Searchable