This Week in the Scholar

It's been a busy week at the library!  We're doing out best to keep adding as many new books to the Scholar as possible while updating our existing content to meet our ever increasing quality standards.  You may have noticed a few church records no longer have their indexes available, but don't worry!  We're making a few updates so the index formatting is uniform for each record and to make searching easier and more accurate.  We hope that everything will be up to standards in a few weeks!

Check out the new selection of genealogies and biographies we've added this week!  Perhaps there is something here you've been looking for.

Biographies
American Crisis Biographies: John C. Calhoun*
George and Cornelius Calvert*
In Memorium of Ellen R. Camp*
American Statesman Lewis Cass*
John S. Chamber*
An Outline Sketch of the Life and Public Services of Zachariah Chandler*
Edwin H. Chapin*
Life and Character of Jonas Chickering*
Life of Henry Clay Vol. 1*
Life of Henry Clay Vol. 2*
Memorial of Mary Clemmer*
Autobiography of Buffalo Bill Cody*
Memorial Addresses on the death of Jacob Collamer*
In Memoriam of George Colt and Caldwell Hart Colt*
Hernando Cortes: Conqueror of Mexico*
Life of Samuel Sullivan Cox*

Genealogies
The Caldwell Records*
A Historic Strain of Blood in America: Frances Latham Clarke, "Mother of Governors"*
Descendants of Mordecai Cooke*

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

*Searchable 

Irish Genealogy Research Luncheon

Do you have Irish ancestors?  If so you probably know just how difficult and confusing researching those ancestors can be.  Researching your Irish family roots is a challenge all its own due to the limited records and difficulty in locating those records.  And that's why the Godfrey would like to invite you to our Irish Genealogy Research Luncheon.

The Godfrey is holding the luncheon at the Playwright Restaurant in Hamden on September 17 from 11-2.  Places are $25.  Speakers will describe basic steps of genealogy and specific records and databases essential for Irish research.

Genetic Genealogist Jennifer Zink will explain how DNA is one of the most powerful tools available to help determine your place or origin.  She will discuss available tests, testing companies, and how personal genomics can help advance your family history when your paper trail runs out, as it is wont to do when researching Irish family history.

We hope that this luncheon will be the start of a series of similar events, each one providing different information regarding research you ancestors from all over the world while enjoying delicious ethnic foods from wonderful restaurants around Connecticut!

Again, the luncheon is at the Playwright Restaurant in Hamden on September 17, 11-2.  Places are $25 per person.  Call the library to make your reservation today!  You can contact the library at 860-346-4375.  Seats are limited, so don't wait!

Last Week on the Scholar

We apologize for the delay in posting this previous week: computer issues caused an unfortunate, but thankfully temporary, roadblock.  So, last week we added a selection of exciting new genealogies and biographies to the Scholar+ Digital Library, including the autobiography of businessman and entertainer extraordinaire P.T. Barnum!  We've gotten through the backlogged Bs and are now well into the Cs!

Keep watching the blog for more updates and be sure to check out the Scholar's ever growing collection.

Biographies
Spencer Fullerton Baird: A Biography*
Struggles and Triumphs: Autobiography of P.T. Barnum*
The Life of John Brainerd*
Prof. Henry Bronson, M.D.*
Samuel Gilman Brown*
Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch: Architect*
American Men of Letters: William Cullen Bryant*
A Brief Account of the Life of John Casse*

Genealogies
The Baldwin Genealogy*
The Ballous in America*
The Banks Family*
The Barker Genealogy*
Bartholomew Family Records*
The Beckwiths*
The Beville Family of VA, GA, and FL*
The Bingham Genealogy*
Binney Family Genealogy*
Genealogy of Thomas Bird*
The Boone Family*
Descendants of Charles Bowler*
The Brigham Family History*
Genealogy of the Buford Family in America*
The Bull Family*
The Burke and Alvord Memorial: A Genealogical Account of the Descendants of Richard Burke of Sudbury, MA*
Burley or Burleigh Family*

Military- Civil War
The Cannoneer: Recollection of Service in the Army of the Potomac*

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

*Searchable

Scholar Content Tops 500 Individual Books!

This week we are proud to announce that the Godfrey Scholar has hit the 500 book mark!  This includes printed and handwritten works, but not the 226 volumes of the American Genealogical-Biographical Index.  There have been a lot of technical setbacks along the way so we are very excited to have reached such an important milestone!

To break it down we have:

226 volumes of the American Genealogical-Biographical Index,
71 Biographies,
9 Cemetery Records (not including the 909 Cemeteries indexed in the Ed Laput Cemetery Project),
53 Church Records,
8 Directories,
9 Foreign Books,
96 volumes of Funeral Home Records,
91 Genealogies,
2 Maps,
56 State and Local Histories,
and
11 Vital Records

For a grand total of 793 books or 567 not including the AGBI!  Of these 536 are searchable through the Scholar Search function.

A big thank you goes out to our dedicated volunteers who scan the books and do all the indexing of handwritten work.  Without them we certainly could not have gotten this far!

We will continue to add new content weekly to the Scholar, including both printed books and handwritten records.  This week we have a selection of genealogies and biographies, with a book on one soldier's reminiscences on his service in the Civil War thrown in for good measure.  Be sure to check the blog for updates and news! 

This Week in the Scholar

We're working our way through the Bs with this week's batch of genealogies and biographies uploaded to the Scholar!  It's also a great week for Middletown researches!  Two more volumes of the Doolittle Funeral Home Records are now available on the Scholar as well as a portion of the midwife record of Sebastiana Grimaldi Misenti, who acted as the midwife to the large population of Italian immigrants who lived in Middletown.

Biographies
Reminiscences of Sylvester Barbour*
Memoirs of Fanny Abiah Barton*
Memoirs of Gregory T. Bedell*
Life and Work of Henry Ward Beecher*
Memoirs of Rev. Edward Bickrstech*
Forging His Chains: Autobiography of George Bidwell*
Memoirs of Egbert Byron Bingham*
Letters, Journals and memories of E. Huntington Blatchford*
Memoirs of Mary Anna Boardman*
Life and Art of Edwin Booth*
Travel Letters of Phillip Brooks*
Biography of James Buchanan the 15th President of the United States*
Memoirs of George Burgess*
Memoirs of James N. Burnes*

Funeral Home Records
Doolittle Burial Returns: Volume 62: Jan. 1965 to Dec. 1966
Doolittle Burial Returns: Volume 63: Dec. 1966 to Nov. 1968

Genealogies
Genealogy of the Balch Family in America*
The Barker Pedigree*
History of the Society of Descendants of Robert Bartlet*
Batchelder-Bacheller Genealogy*
History and Genealogy of the Bicknell Family*
Memorial Genealogy of Joshau Bicknell*
The Binney Family Genealogy*
Early Marriages of the Black Family*
Ancestry and Genealogy of Nathan Blake and Susan Torrey Blake*
The Genealogy of Peter Blinn*
Bradley of Essex County*
The Brainerd Family Genealogy*
The Brown Genealogy*
The Butler's Book*

Vital Records
Midwife Log of Sebastiana Grimaldi Misenti

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

*Searchable

56 Years of Middletown Burial Records come to the Scholar

The funeral home business has gone through some dramatic changes over the years.  For quite a while funeral homes as we know them today simply did not exist.  Caskets were made at the local furniture store,  viewings were held at the home of the deceased or deceased's family, and funeral services were held at the same place as the viewing or at the local church.  This was precisely the situation for the Dunn family in Middletown who dabbled in the funeral business until 1924 when brothers William L. and Mark F. Dunn opened the Dunn Funeral Home at 530 Main Street, Middletown.

The Dunn family consisted of parents Mark F. and Mary S. (Green) Dunn of Middletown, six brothers, John Dunn of New Haven, James P. Dunn, Edward Dunn, Frank M. (Mark F.) Dunn, P. Joseph Dunn, and William L. Dunn, and one sister, Mary E. Dunn, who married William Pitt.  The father, Mark F., and two sons, P. Joseph and Edward R., were all policemen.  Other members of the family operated the Dunn Funeral Business, which started in 1910.

The Dunn Funeral Home stayed under family operation until its closing in 1966 and subsequent sale.  The property on Washington Street, which became the Dunn Funeral Home after the original Main Street building, was sold to Dr. Nicholas J. Daukas, who intended to make it into an office for his practice.

For the fifty-six years they were open the Dunn Funeral Home kept meticulous records of their business.  The burial returns include information like the name of the deceased, their date of birth and death, their place of death, burial, and residence, and the names of their parents as well as the cause of death, if known.  Combined with the records from the Doolittle Funeral Home, also available on the Scholar, these records offer an incredible amount of genealogical information regarding the population of Middletown Connecticut during the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Thanks to our wonderful volunteers these records have also been indexed and are thus completely searchable!

If you have ancestors from the Middletown area who may have died between the years of 1910 and 1966, it might be well worth your while to take a look at these fantastic funeral records!

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

This Week in the Scholar

This week we've added more biographies and genealogies from our library of scanned books.  About half the books added this week have to do with families or people with last names starting with A or B.  Another volume of the Doolittle Funeral Home Burial Records is also on the Scholar and the indexing for the Dunn Funeral Records is well on its way, with volumes 1-5 already completed and the rest in progress!

Biographies
The Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich*
The Life of William Alexander, Earl of Stirling*
Recollections of Henry Watkins Allen*
The Memorial of Joseph and Lucy Clark Allen*
Memorial Addresses of William Boyd Allison*
Life and Letters of Washington Allston*
Memorial Addresses of Carl Carey Anderson*
Life and Career of John Andre*
Sketch of the Official Life of John A. Andrew*
Life of John A. Andrews Vol. 1*
Life of John A. Andrews Vol. 2*
A Religious Biography of William Watson Andrews*
Biographical Study of Samuel Chapman Armstrong*
Autobiography of Wilmer Atkinson*
 Record of the Statue Dedication of Major General Nathaniel Prentiss Banks*
A Sunny Life: Biography of Samuel June Barrows*
Autobiography of Joseph Bates*
Autobiography of Lyman Beecher*
A Girl's Life from 80 Years Ago: Sellections of Letters by Eliza Southgate Bowne*
Memorial Addresses of Abraham L. Brick*
Solomon Stevens Burleson: Officer of the Line*
American Men of Letters: William Cullen Bryant*

Genealogies
Descendants of James and William Adams*
Descendants of Polly and Ebenezer Alden*
Descendants of Hugh Amory*
Balch Genealogica*
Monograph of the Family Beebe*
Descendants of Edward Chapman of Ipswich MA*

Funeral Home Records
Doolittle Burial Returns: Volume 61: May 1963 to Feb. 1965

State and Local Histories
Reasons Why Rhode Island Declared her Independence of Great Britain*

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

*Searchable

Scholar Changes Explained

If you've used the Godfrey Scholar in the last day or so you may have noticed that things are not as they once were.  But do not fear!  All of the books and records are still right where they are supposed to be: we've just made a few formatting improvements to make your research experience simpler and more intuitive  The content of the Scholar is much more visible and it takes fewer click to navigate through the categories and subcategories!

Most of the changes made were alterations in section subcategory titles so as to better reflect the nature of the content they contained.  Certain materials were also renamed and more works are now visable in the main section for certain sections.  We've compiled a detailed list of the changes made below.

•  "Databases" is now "Indexes" in the Cemeteries, Church Records, and Funeral Home Records sections.
• "Digital Content" is now "Books" in the Biographies, Foreign, Genealogies, Military, Newspapers, and State and Local Histories sections.
• "Digital Content" is now "Record Books" in the Church Records and Funeral Home Records sections.
• "Digital Content" is now "Vital Records" in the Vital Records section.
• "Individual Histories" under the Civil War subcategory is now "Biographies and Histories of Officers and Soldiers". 
• The format of book titles in the Biography and Genealogies sections is now uniformly "Last Name, First Name: Remainder of Book's Title"
• We added "Family Charts" and "Journals" as subcategories to the Genealogies section. 
• The "Finding Aid" for the AGBI is now called "Abbreviation Key and Links to AGBI Sources"
• The "Brooks Card Collection" in the Vital Records section is now called "Haddam Neck and Surrounding Towns Vital Record Abstracts: Brooks Family Card Collection"

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding these changes please do not hesitate to contact the us.  Happy researching!

This Week in the Scholar

This week we really dug into our backlog of scanned books to bring a huge number of biographies as well as some genealogies to the Scholar!  You'll notice that most of the books we've added focus on people whose last names start with an A: this is because we've started from the beginning of our stored books and will be continuing down the list in roughly alphabetical order.  Expect to see more like these in the weeks to come!

Biographies
Charles Francis Adams, An Autobiography*
American Statesmen: John Adams*
American Statesmen: John Quincey Adams*
American Statesmen: Samuel Adams*
Letters and Recollections of Alexander Agassiz*
Elizabeth Cary Agassiz: A Biography*
Life and Correspondence of Louis Agassiz Vol. 1*
Life and Correspondence of Louis Agassiz Vol. 2*
Louisa May Alcott Her Life, Letters, and Journals*
Crowding Memories by Thomas Bailey Aldrich*
The Life of Archibald Alexander, D.D.*
Forty Years Familiar Letters of James W. Alexander Vol. 1*
Forty Years Familiar Letters of James W. Alexander Vol. 2*
Memoir of Colonel John Allan*
Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Heroes*
Biography of Deacon James Allen*
Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of Thomas Allen*
Memoirs of Governor Andrew*
One Girls Influence: A Memorial of Louise Stockton Andrews*
Israel Angell Colonel of the 2nd RI Regiment*
Memoirs of Francis Atwater*
Presidents and Pies: Life in Washington 1897-1919*

Cemeteries
The Carper-Miller Cemetery Inscriptions Collection: Glastonbury, CT*

Funeral Records
Doolittle Funeral Home Burial Returns: Volume 61: May 1963 to Feb. 1965

Genealogies
History of the Thomas Adams and Thomas Hastings Families*
Phineas Allens Descendants*
A Supplement to the Allen Family*
Centennial Celebration of the Annin Family at the Old Stone House*
Genealogy of some Descendants of John Coollidge*
American Ancestry, Volume 3: Embracing Lineages from the Whole of the United States 1888*
American Ancestry, Volume 12: Embracing Lineages from the Whole of the United States 1899*

State and Local Histories
University of Michigan General Catalog of Officers and Students*

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

*Searchable