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BEYOND THE BARBOUR INDEX: A GUIDE TO MORE -- AND MORE ACCURATE --

EARLY CONNECTICUT BIRTHS, DEATHS, AND MARRIAGES ©

Linda MacLachlan

The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Vital Records has been copied in various forms at various times, including at Barbour’s own direction. While these republications are more accessible than the original, none are as accurate or complete. Yet even the original Barbour Collection leaves much to be desired, by modern evidentiary standards.

What is the Barbour Index?

The original Barbour Collection (hereafter referred to as the “Barbour Index”) is a set of alphabetized slips in file drawers in the Connecticut State Library in Hartford (hereafter “CSL”) -- one for each Connecticut birth or death record and two for each marriage record in 143 Connecticut towns by about 1850– prepared under the direction of Lucius B. Barbour, Connecticut Examiner of Public Records from 1922 to 1934. For 137 of these Connecticut towns, extractions were performed, which are now in the possession of the CSL as well. In these extractions, genealogists appointed by Barbour attempted to find and copy all the birth, marriage, and death records in what they believed to be all the earliest extant town vital records. Sometimes vital record equivalents and other sources were extracted instead of and/or in addition to primary sources. The slips from these 137 extractions were typed by Barbour’s staff in alphabetical order and bound into separate volumes (hereafter called “Town Lists”), also available at CSL. Barbour apparently felt no need to create Town Lists for the remaining six towns (or for the earliest records of Norwich and Woodstock) because their vital records had already been published.

Thus, for the towns of Bolton, Coventry, Enfield, Mansfield, New Haven, and Vernon -- and for the earlier records of Norwich and Woodstock, as well -- Barbour’s slips are taken from published books of that town’s vital records. In other words, all of the slips in the Barbour Index are copied either from then recently published books or from extractions which Barbour commissioned. The Barbour Index relies exclusively upon these books and manuscripts and never directly upon primary records.

As a general rule, the Barbour Index sought to include all vital records for these 143 towns through at least 1850. For the 137 Town Lists accomplished at his direction, Barbour specifies the date range of the vital records actually extracted on the title page of each Town List. These date ranges are noteworthy, as several town extractions stop short of 1850. In the Colebrook volume, for example, the records stop in 1810. In addition, most of Barbour’s extractions appear to begin later than others report as the beginning of the town’s records, and often the difference is significant. For example, Betty Jean Morrison, in her useful reference, Connecting to Connecticut, reports vital records of 34 of these towns as beginning earlier than Barbour has specified. The online catalog of the Family History Library (hereafter “FHL”) describes the vital records of 79 of these towns as beginning earlier than Barbour has specified.undefined

Another problem with the completeness of the Barbour Index is that there appear to have been more than 143 Connecticut towns collecting vital records by 1850. The online catalog of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (hereafter “NEHGS”) indicates that there were 160 towns eligible to be indexed by Barbour, but it does not clearly identify them. Eight towns not in Barbour are listed as separate entities in the 1850 census, though, of these, only New Fairfield, Seymour and Trumbull are recognized by Morrison as having been incorporated by that date. Many towns not separately included in Barbour have pre-1851 church records and/or other transcriptions or compilations listed under their town name in the FHL catalog. Of those, however, the FHL catalogs only Cromwell, Seymour and Trumbull having vital records transcribed by their own town clerk by 1850. The New Fairfield vital records were destroyed by fire in 1868, and, unlike Danbury -- which had its records burned in 1777 – New Fairfield’s town clerk apparently did not succeed in reconstructing them.

The bibliography below includes 147 towns: Barbour’s 143 plus Cromwell, New Fairfield, Seymour and Trumbull. Records listed by the FHL catalog for the other Connecticut “towns” populated but yet unincorporated in 1850 are included within the bibliographies for their respective parent towns.

Another issue which must be addressed for the Barbour Collection is its accuracy. Every introduction to one of Barbour’s 137 Town Lists includes this statement, or one quite similar to it:

"The manuscript copy [i.e., Barbour-commissioned extraction], now in the possession of the Connecticut State Library, has not been compared with the original, and doubtless errors exist. It is hoped that as errors or omissions are found notes will be entered in this volume and on the slips which are included in the General Index of Connecticut Vital Records also in the possession of the Connecticut State Library."

The significance of this warning varies considerably from one town to the next. A few towns (such as Andover, Avon, East Windsor and Westbrook) were extracted from a photocopy of the town’s vital records book[s]. A great many other extractors had the tedious and difficult job of finding all the early vital records scattered throughout several town books of land records, such as in Berlin, Branford, Bristol, and Burlington, to name just a few. Still others (such as the extractors for Clinton, Colchester, Durham, East Haven, Hartford, Hebron, Milford, Montville, Salisbury, Sharon, Stamford, Waterbury, and Windsor) were consolidating several different (often private) sources covering the same period of time and confronting the problem of duplicate -- or partly duplicative -- entries. A few others (such as Cheshire, Derby, Saybrook and Simsbury) were simply copied, in whole or in part, from a preexisting compilation of the town’s vital records, not unlike the eight towns for which no Town List (or a partial Town List) was prepared. See discussion above.

The particular problems (or relative straightforwardness) of the sources Barbour relied upon for each town are detailed below. Intuitively, the less straightforward the copying was in a particular town, the more likely it should be to find significant discrepancies between the Barbour Index and the records from which the Index was developed.

Accessing the Barbour Index

Barbour’s slip index to the vital records of 143 Connecticut towns may be viewed at the CSL. In accordance with Barbour’s statement about corrections, above, many additions and corrections appear, in fact, to have been made to the slips on file in the CSL. Microfilms of theses slips were made in 1949 by the Genealogical Society of the Utah. These microfilms are available at NEHGS, the National Library of the Daughters of the American Revolution (hereafter “DAR”), the FHL in Salt Lake City (hereafter “SLC”) and your local Family History Center (hereafter “FHC”). They are the preferred starting point for research because they are more complete than more recent publications, because they are closer to the original source, and because one can there search virtually the entire state at once, regardless of the town that might have generated the record sought.

It must be noted, however, that this microfilming is not quite complete. This film crew skipped some data where a CSL file drawer contained slips beyond the description on outside of the drawer. For example, FHL film 2938 is labeled Nos-Ow., but contains __ slips beyond those, for the Oysterbanks family. The FHL films of the Barbour Index also exclude any additions and corrections made to CSL file slips after 14 December 1949.

Photocopies of Barbour’s 137 Town Lists may be viewed at CSL or on microfilm. The Genealogical Publishing Company (hereafter “GPC”) has re-copied and consolidated these 137 Town Lists into 55 paperbacks now available in genealogy libraries across the nation, and on www.Ancestry.com and, town by town, on various free websites. These volumes appear to contain well over 600.000 entries, counting every marriage twice (one entry for each spouse). The GPC edition of the Town Lists seems to be relatively accurate, except for its total omission of the 137 introductory pages where Barbour describes his sources and warns of his failure to check the accuracy of his work, as described above. As a copy of the entire Barbour Collection, however, it is woefully incomplete because it omits the more than 100,000 birth, death and marriage slips which are only in the 143-town Barbour Index.

Recently a compact disc titled The Ricker Compilation of Vital Records of Early Connecticut, (hereafter the “Ricker Compilation”) was published, which claims to have re-copied not only Barbour’s 137 Town Lists, but also the sources from which the rest of his slips were taken, and a variety of other early Connecticut birth, marriage and death record compilations. The additional vital record equivalents and substitutes extracted in the Ricker Compilation include church records, transcriptions from the Charles R. Hale Collection of Gravestone Inscriptions at CSL (hereafter the “Hale Collection”) which were previously published in The Connecticut Nutmegger (hereafter “CN,”) and other lists of early Connecticut births, marriages and deaths said to be found at CSL. While the appeal of a list which claims to consolidate 1.2 million records cannot be denied, it is not easily searchable and seems to contain many errors. Furthermore Ricker’s citations are too incomplete to allow comparison of the text on her compact disc with either her sources or Barbour’s sources. The Ricker Compilation is, however, unique in its portability. It will permit a Connecticut researcher to gain at least an initial impression of the vital records in the Barbour Index -- including those which are not in the republished and reprinted versions of Barbour’s Town Lists or the FHL films of the Barbour Index -- from virtually any computer anywhere.

For example; here is a birth record from page 50 of Hebron’s First Book of Vital Records:

''January 13 1748/9 Leah daughter to Benjamin Bissell was born. ''

Here is Barbour’s slip record of this birth (alphabetized under “BISSELL, BESEL, BESSEL, BEYSELL, BISEL, BISSALL, BISSEL, BISSILL, BISSET, BIZELL, BYSSEL):

BISSELL, Leah d. Benjamin, b. Jan 13 1748/9 HEBRON Vital Records Vol. 1 Page 50

Here is how Barbour’s typist replicated this record in his Hebron Town List under “BISSELL, BISEL:”

''Leah, d. Benjamin, b. Jan. 13, 1749/9 [sic] [Vol.] 1 [Page] 50

Here is how GPC printed this information in its Hebron volume under “BISSELL, BISEL:”

Leah, d. Benjamin, b. Jan 13 1749/9 [sic] [Book] 1 [Page] 50

And here is how it looks in the Ricker Compilation under “BISSELL: BIZELL; BISSIL; BASSEL:”

Leah, d. Benjamin, b. Jan 13 1748/9 - Hebron VR.

While Ricker’s version is, in fact, accurate, it is unclear how she obtained the correct information, when the source she claims to have copied was, in fact, inaccurate. Thus, for both completeness and accuracy, no modern alternative is yet the equal of the original Barbour Index. The Barbour Index is, however, only the beginning of a search for Connecticut vital records.

Going beyond the Barbour Index

What follows is a list of Barbour’s actual sources for the information on his slips for each of the 143 towns in the Barbour Indexxxxi and the (generally) primary records which each claims to copy, along with the FHL film numbers for these and other vital records (in bold face) for that town. For each town, a second paragraph lists additional sources for birth, marriage, and death information, such as church records, cemetery and other early transcriptions reflecting vital statistics, and divorce records (which report the date of the marriage being dissolved). This list also includes similar information for four other Connecticut towns which Barbour did not index: Cromwell, New Fairfield, Seymour, and Trumbull.

To use this list, look for your ancestors’ hometown. If the town is not listed, it was not recognized as a separate record-keeping entity by 1850. Consult a general reference to determine which Connecticut town(s) your ancestors’ hometown was part of before 1850. Note the dates after virtually all towns named below. They constitute the date range for which Barbour claims to have actually extracted the vital records of that town. In some cases (all noted with an underline under the second date), Barbour did not index a town’s vital records through 1850. For these towns, the last two to forty years prior to 1850 still need to be extracted and published. In many other cases, the description of the original town vital records in the FHL catalog or in Morrison’s Connecting to Connecticut, supra., suggests that the town clerk recorded some vital statistics which preceded the earliest records extracted at Barbour’s direction by anywhere from one to ninety years or more. In these cases, Barbour’s beginning date for the Town List is underlined, and the record(s) which claim(s) to predate that time should be regarded as a research “must.” Many of these anomalies may be the result of the subdivision of towns, or of a misdescription by FHL catalogers or Morrison, but one cannot be sure without further research.

For each of the 137 towns with Town Lists, the first line also reports the date Barbour completed that particular list, the FHL film number where Barbour’s original town list can be found, and the volume number of the GPC volume that republishes that list. The rest of the paragraph summarizes (1) the source(s) of Barbour’s slips for that town, (2) all the documents in which Barbour’s extractor reported having found records, (3) FHL film numbers for every source Barbour relies upon, insofar as it is evident in the FHL catalog, (4) any other official sources which FHL catalogs as containing that town’s vital records and (5) any published article reporting additions and/or corrections to that Barbour Town List.

The inset paragraph which follows every town paragraph generally begins with FHL citations for (1) church records &lt;ref&gt;34These Connecticut towns have lost some or all of their pre-1800 church records: Andover, Bethany, Bristol, Canterbury (Westminster), Canton Center, Coventry, East Granby, East Haddam (Hadlyme), East Lyme, Ellington, Glastonbury, Goshen, Greenwich, Harwinton, Hebron, North Guilford, Litchfield, Lyme (Hanmburgh), Marlborough, Monroe, Plymouth, Ridgefield, Sherman, Somers, South Manchester, Stamford, Tolland, Torringford, Watertown, West Haven. Frederic W. Bailey, editor, Early Connecticut Marriages as Found on Ancient Church Records Prior to 1800 (New Haven: Price, Lee &amp; Adkins, 1890).&lt;/ref&gt; cataloged by FHL as containing baptisms, burials, etc.; (2) town cemetery transcriptions and other compilations of that town’s births, infant baptisms, marriages, deaths, and/or burials cataloged by FHL; (3) transcriptions of the Charles R. Hale Collection of Gravestone Inscriptions at CSL (hereafter the “Hale Collection”). It continues with (4) church records in the microfilm and manuscript Archives of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut, in Hartford, (5) other documents containing Connecticut vital records which are extracted in The Ricker Compilation,. (6) other source materials available at the NEHGS Library in Boston, Massachusetts, and (7) the rapidly expanding category of online databases and image reprints. Some of these records appear duplicative, but are not necessarily entirely identical.

Add to the vital records substitutes listed under your town’s name, four online resources which are otherwise unlisted simply because they are second-hand digitizations including virtually all early Connecticut towns. They should all be utilized merely as a convenient preview of the original sources cited:


 * 1) “Connecticut Marriages and Deaths 1792-1837.” Is comprised of thirteen volumes of Connecticut death notices, 1792-1833, and one volume of Connecticut marriages notices, 1820-1837, from NEHGS’ Special Collections. These manuscript volumes represent the culling of many New England newspapers by Rev. John Elliot Bowman between 1928 and 1933. This database, and the two below, are easily searchable by members of the NEHGS at NewEnglandAncestors.org.
 * 2) “Cemetery Transcriptions from the NEHGS Manuscript Collections,” database, NEHGS (NewEnglandAncestors.org, accessed 1 March 2008). On the access date, this database includes 30,874 records of Connecticut burials before 1851.
 * 3) “Ye Old Folks of Connecticut," database, NEHGS (NewEnglandAncestors.org, accessed 1 March 2008), citing Frederick Nash’s list of all residents of eighty years of age and over that were living in Connecticut as of 1884 An image reprint of this book is available online at Heritage Questundefined
 * 4) Frederick Bailey’s Early Connecticut Marriages, a database offered to subscribers by Ancestry.com and WorldVital Records.com, and to non-subscribers at FHCs through their subscription to WorldVital Records.com It compiles marriages from Connecticutchurches which recorded them before 1800.