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!

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