California Genealogical Society blog: CGS Library Collections: Connecticut

Copies of The Connecticut Nutmegger
range from 1968 to 2009.

One in a series by CGS member Chris Pattillo, highlighting some of our holdings at the Library in Oakland. For a fuller listing of our books, journals, and more, consult the CGS Library catalog. Our catalog is also listed in WorldCat.

Our Connecticut collection is large. It occupies fourteen and a half shelves. There are several Who's Who-type books, histories of Connecticut, and many books devoted to individual counties. If you have Connecticut ancestors you are certain to find something of interest.

The collection includes a great number of historical society journals. The largest collection of these is the Connecticut Nutmegger which fills two and a half shelves. Our set starts with Volume 1 in 1968–the year the Connecticut Society of Genealogists began. The most current volume we have is Volume 41 Number 4 from March 2009.

The history of the design of Bushnell Park
is explained in a 1982 edition of
The Connecticut Historical Society journal

The next journal collection we have is The Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin from October 1953 to July 1982. The cover photo of the most recent volume shows a photograph of Bushnell Park in Hartford. As a landscape architect, my interest was piqued. The article dispels the false notion that the park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and ultimately gives credit to Gervaise Wheeler, who won a design competition sponsored by the city. In the end, though, Wheeler’s design proved too expensive and the city ordered that the final design incorporate features of the top two submissions.
(It is not uncommon for Olmsted to be credited with works designed by others–Golden Gate Park, designed by John McClaren, is frequently credited to Olmsted.)

We have a few copies of Connecticut Genealogy News from 2008 and 2009, and a tattered set of The Connecticut Magazine beginning in September 1899. The latter magazine is well illustrated and somewhat surprisingly includes advertising.

The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records

We have the entire 55 volumes of The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records, compiled between 1994 and 2000 by Lorraine Cook White. It's a transcription of many Connecticut vital records (birth, marriage, death) from 1630 to 1850, arranged in alphabetical order by town.

A portrait of Henry Newton, one of the
biographical subjects of the History
of the State of Connecticut

There's also the Genealogical and Family History of the State of Connecticut, a four-volume set donated by Edith Atherton Vaughan Lindenberger. The set was published in 1911 under the auspices of some of the state's leading historians and genealogists. It professes to present “an amount and variety of genealogical and personal information and portraiture unequaled by any kindred publication.”