Connecticut Obituaries

Connecticut has printed death notices for more than 260 years, and its earliest ones survive in one of the best-indexed collections in the country: the Hale Collection, which abstracts death and marriage notices from Connecticut’s early newspapers.

Recent Connecticut obituaries (2000 to today)

Most obituaries published since about 2000 are online. Daily papers post paid death notices and family-written obituaries in an Obituaries section, usually hosted by Legacy.com, and keep them online with a guest book. The largest daily papers in Connecticut are:

• Hartford Courant
• New Haven Register
• Connecticut Post (Bridgeport)
• Stamford Advocate
• Republican-American (Waterbury), on CT Insider
• The Day (New London)

Legacy.com’s Connecticut page searches the obituaries of most of these papers and many smaller ones at once. Funeral homes also post obituaries on their own websites, often before the newspaper does and sometimes instead of it: search the person’s name with the town and “obituary” or “funeral home.” For obituaries no longer online, ask your public or state library: many offer NewsBank or ProQuest databases with the full text of recent newspapers, free with a library card.

Connecticut obituaries in historic newspapers

The Connecticut Gazette began in New Haven in 1755, and the Hartford Courant, founded in 1764, is often called the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States. Colonial and early republic papers rarely ran obituaries as we know them. A death usually appeared as a line or two in a “Deaths” column, sometimes with the person’s age, town and a short tribute, and notices for people from neighboring towns were common.

In the 1930s the Works Progress Administration, under Charles R. Hale, abstracted those early death and marriage notices along with cemetery inscriptions. The newspaper abstracts run from roughly 1750 to the end of the Civil War and are filed alphabetically by surname, so they work as a statewide death index for a period before Connecticut kept consistent vital records.

From the late 1800s the larger dailies in Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport and Waterbury carried longer obituaries, and many towns supported weekly papers that reported local deaths in detail. Those later papers are mostly on microfilm at the Connecticut State Library, with a growing share digitized through Chronicling America and commercial databases.

Where to find older Connecticut obituaries

Digitized Connecticut newspapers

• Connecticut Newspapers guide, Connecticut State Library — Where to find digitized and microfilmed Connecticut papers, title by title.

Obituary and death indexes

• Hale Collection (FamilySearch) — Free index and images of the WPA abstracts of early Connecticut newspaper death notices and cemetery inscriptions.

Archives and libraries

• Genealogy and vital records, Connecticut State Library — The State Library's guide to Connecticut vital records, the Barbour Collection and its newspaper microfilm.
• Connecticut Newspapers, FamilySearch Research Wiki — Volunteer-maintained guide to Connecticut newspaper archives, indexes and microfilm, with local links.

Also search the nationwide archives: Chronicling America, FamilySearch, Find a Grave, Newspapers.com. See all nationwide obituary resources.

Connecticut death records

Connecticut death certificates are public records. Order copies from the town clerk where the death happened or the Department of Public Health; the Connecticut State Library holds older town vital records and the Barbour Collection.

• Connecticut Department of Public Health, Vital Records — the office that issues Connecticut death certificates, with ordering instructions and fees.
• Where to Write for Vital Records: Connecticut — the CDC’s summary of where to order, current fees and which years the office holds.
• Connecticut Vital Records, FamilySearch Research Wiki — free death indexes and certificate collections, with the years each covers.

Tips for finding an obituary in Connecticut

• Use the Hale Collection for early deaths. The WPA's Hale Collection abstracts death notices from early Connecticut newspapers and cemetery inscriptions.
• Go to the town clerk. Connecticut keeps vital records by town, so the clerk where the death happened is the fastest source.
• Check New York papers. Fairfield County families often had notices in New York City papers too.
• Look beyond the word “obituary.” Older papers reported deaths under headings like “Died,” “Deaths,” local news and personals columns, funeral notices and cards of thanks, and often listed married women under the husband’s name (“Mrs. John Smith”). See death notices vs. obituaries.

Common questions