Genealogy
Connecticut & New England
- Connecticut Historical Society: The Connecticut Historical Society collections include printed genealogies, Connecticut town and city directories (incomplete runs), and local histories (including published vital records, church records, and cemetery inscriptions) for New England and some non-New England states. In addition, the collections include the following: Reference Material, Genealogical Manuscripts, Microfilm, Microfiche, Genealogical Periodicals and Online Resources.
- Connecticut Society of Genealogists: Connecticut Society of Genealogists has been the premier organization dedicated to serving family history enthusiasts throughout the State of Connecticut. While much of the content is freely accessible to all, certain elements require either membership or free site registration. Members of the Connecticut Society of Genealogists enjoy full, unrestricted access to all site content and features, but must also register on this new site to obtain a secure username/password of their choice.
- Connecticut State Library - History and Genealogy: Resources include an extensive collection of local histories and genealogies, with particular emphasis on Connecticut and New England; most Connecticut town vital records, land records, and probate records from the 1600s to the early 1900s on microfilm; church records from hundreds of Connecticut churches, most available on microfilm; transcriptions of family Bible records and cemetery inscriptions; abstracts of newspaper notices of marriages and deaths; and military records. It holds Federal census records for Connecticut, 1790 to 1920 and for the other New England states, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, 1790 to 1850 and the Index to New England Naturalization Petitions on microfilm; and indexes to, and collections of, published and microfilmed ships’ passenger lists and other immigration records, with emphasis on New England and New York.
- Hartford Courant (1764-1992): Connecticut news and a wide variety of world, national, state, and local news. Includes full-page coverage of the Hartford Courant and its predecessors from the first issue of the Connecticut Courant in 1764.
- New England Historic Genealogical Society: The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is the nation’s oldest genealogical society. The organization is committed to helping new and experienced genealogy researchers trace their heritage in New England and around the world.
General Guides
- Ancestry.com: Ancestry.com gives you access to historical records with information on over 6 billion people. These rich collections include photographs, memoirs, maps, census documents, family trees and detailed records about births, marriages, deaths, military service, immigration, land ownership and much more. To access the full database, you must use the computers in the library.
*Due to the current situation with COVID-19, access to this resource has been temporarily expanded to library cardholders working remotely, courtesy of ProQuest and its partner Ancestry.*
Please use this link to access ancestry.com from home with your Newington Library Card.
- Biography Reference Bank: Offers in-depth, original profiles of Current Biography and World Authors series, the thorough periodical coverage of Biography Index, and the specialist biographical content of Junior Authors and Illustrators. This database contains biographical full-text articles, page images and abstracts from today’s leading magazines and journals.
- Cyndi’s List of Genealogical Sites: Hundreds of thousands of links related to genealogy, organized and cross-referenced in over 100 categories. This site is one of the richest resources for genealogy studies.
- Ellis Island Family History Center: This database provides information on 22 million immigrants and ships’ crews who arrived at Ellis Island and the Port of New York between 1898 and 1924. Searchable by name, including alternate spelling, results provide date of arrival, age, marital status, ethnicity, residence, gender, ship and port of departure. Information on each ship and ship manifests are also available. Immigrant Experience includes The Peopling of America, which covers pre-1790 to 2000 with a "timeline showing forces behind immigration and their impact on the immigrant experience." Free registration allows searches to be saved and records to be annotated.
- Library of Congress, Local History and Genealogy: Includes the Library’s online catalog, the American Memory project and the Local History and Genealogy Reading Room.
- National Genealogical Society: A service organization that leads and educates the national genealogical community and assists members in tracing family histories.
- National Archives and Records Administration: The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation’s record keeper. NARA keeps only those federal records that are judged to have continuing value. There are approximately 9 billion pages of textual records; 7.2 million maps, charts, and architectural drawings; more than 20 million still photographs; billions of machine-readable data sets; and more than 365,000 reels of film and 110,000 videotapes.
- U.S. GenWeb Project: Database organized by volunteers working together to provide free genealogy websites for genealogical research in every county and every state of the United States. Organization is by county and state, and this website provides you with links to all the state genealogy websites which, in turn, provide gateways to the counties.