| Historic Middlesex County Book
Project |
Three basic sources for anyone researching
the history, biography, or genealogy of Middlesex County, Connecticut, are now
available here, in their entirety, free to the public. A $5,000 grant from the
Middlesex County Community Foundation/Connecticut Humanities Council made
digitization of these materials possible.
Statistical Account of the County of
Middlesex, in Connecticut
by David Dudley Field (originally published in
1819) includes all manner of intriguing information about events major and
mundane, from murders to mining to the mysterious Moodus noises.
The 1884 History
of Middlesex County with Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men
(published in 1884) includes detailed histories of each of the 16 towns in the
county, highlighting religious, military, and industrial heritage along with
interesting tidbits about fixtures of local life such as taverns, newspapers,
and schools. It includes biographies of more than 150 notable individuals, and
portraits of more than 50 of them.
The 1903 Commemorative Biographical
Record of Middlesex County
Published in 1903, features biographies of more
than a thousand men - and a few women - that were prominent at the turn of the
twentieth century, along with their family lineages, and hundreds of portraits.
The majority of the biographies are of individuals with roots that extended
back to the colonial era, some of whose names are still part of the landscape
today, such as Russell, Wilcox, Pelton, Lyman, and Gildersleeve. However, among
them are included biographies of a number of recently arrived immigrants from
Ireland, Scotland, and Germany, with names like Dunn and Inglis and Kretzmer,
who had prospered in their adopted homeland.
The
Middlesex County Community Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to
improving the quality of life in Middlesex County. Its mission is to work with
charitably-minded individuals and organizations to build permanent endowments
and other charitable funds and to support local non-profit organizations
through effective grant making to address community needs. Since its founding
in 1997, the Community Foundation has provided over $850,000 in grants to more
than 142 organizations for the arts; cultural and heritage programs'
educational activities' environmental improvements; and for health and human
services. |
(Click on a title to view. Please be advised, these are
large files and may take several minutes to load.)
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