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The Public Records of the State of Connecticut

Volume XXIII (1825-1826) is now available for purchase.

Published by the Connecticut State Library Deborah Schander, State Librarian; Lizette Pelletier, State Archivist

Douglas M. Arnold, Ph.D., Editor Independent Scholar

The Public Records series is an essential resource for scholars of Connecticut’s history, historians of the state’s towns and localities, legislators, lawyers, family historians, genealogists, and other members of the public. It is organized chronologically. The core of the series is a transcription of the manuscript register of the acts, resolutions, and appointments made by the Connecticut’s General Assembly, housed in the State Archives at the Connecticut State Library. Individual volumes contain supplementary documents relevant to the period under consideration. Editorial apparatus includes an introduction, informational annotation, and a comprehensive index.

The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut cover the years 1636-1776 in fifteen volumes. The editors were J. Hammond Trumbull and Charles J. Hoadly. The volumes, which were published between 1850 and 1890, can be viewed on the website of the University of Connecticut’s libraries. The series documents early colonial settlement, the development of laws and governmental institutions, religion and society, the expansion of the economy, Connecticut’s participation in Britain’s colonial wars, and the coming of the American Revolution.

Having reached American Independence, the project continued under the title of The Public Records of the State of Connecticut. The first volume appeared in 1894; twenty three volumes total, covering the years 1776-1826, have been published under the editorships of Charles Hoadly, Leonard W. Labaree, Alfred E. Van Dusen, Christopher Collier, Dorothy Ann Lipson, and Douglas Arnold. On-line versions of these volumes can be accessed on the Connecticut State Library’s website.

The State Records series documents many important chapters in Connecticut’s history, including the state’s participation in the Revolutionary War, economic and political readjustments to peacetime, the adoption of the U.S. Constitution and the political ascendancy of the Federalist Party, partisan rivalry between the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans, and the War of 1812; it also contains valuable information on social and economic history and developments in the state’s towns and localities. Recent volumes of the series have covered the postwar defeat of the Federalists by a Reform coalition, the adoption of a state Constitution and the end of public financing of religion in 1818, and tax and fiscal reform in subsequent years.

Volumes XVIII (1816-1817) and XIX (1818) won the Homer D. Babbidge, Jr., Award from the Association for the Study of Connecticut History in 2008. Volume XX (1819-1820) won the the Betty M. Linsley Award from the Association for the Study of Connecticut History in 2014.