Hello friends!
The Farmington Room has been quite busy with research questions lately, with genealogical journeys, topical pursuits, and tracking down local landmarks. It is truly interesting for me when a flurry of related research inquiries come in. In the past month, even practically in the same week, I had three researchers looking for information on artists living or working in Farmington and Unionville: prints displayed in schools in the 19th century, an instructor at a sewing school in the Farmington Academy (also in the 19th century), and contributors to the town’s Bicentennial Quilts.
Bicentennial Quilt project
A quest to find a list of who made or worked on which block on Farmington’s three Bicentennial Quilts (1976) led to a look through our collection of correspondence, original sketches, photographs, and volunteer notes. While it didn’t seem like there was a complete list among our materials, it seems a good idea to have one handy, and I have gotten some hints and clues from long-time residents. Although there is a framed list of everyone who contributed hanging next to the library’s quilt, the list does not indicate who worked on which blocks.
One of the three quilts was given to the Town, who gave it to the library in the 1990s. At first, it lived in the stairwell leading up to the second floor. Now, you can find it in the hallway leading to the Jay Johnston Community Room on the first floor. The other two quilts were raffled off as fundraisers. (I recently learned that the Unionville Museum is in possession of one and is currently on display there.)
There were two parts to making each block: the piecing, and the applique. Often each technique was done by a different person. Creating a complete list of who worked on which blocks may help researchers on community art projects, finding old friends, and identifying creative works of Farmington and Unionville residents.
Family history research
The other research flurry I’ve experienced in the past month involves people just starting out on their family history journey. I hope to develop a structured genealogy class in the foreseeable future, but in the meantime, I want to share a list of resources here that my colleagues in the Adult Information Services department developed to support genealogy researchers over the years.
What we check:
- Our general reference collection includes a section of published family histories and biographies on individuals.
- Our home inventory project indexes—mainly the Historic Resources Inventory and the Prentice Papers—provide a wealth of names associated with properties in town.
- Our Farmington Cemetery index lists everyone buried in Farmington, Unionville, and even Avon (a couple are right on the line between towns).
- If an ancestor was active or well-known in Farmington, the name may appear in Christopher Bickford’s Farmington in Connecticut (Farmington Historical Society, 1982). We have copies of this book that you can check out!!
- Our large collection of ephemera, which we call our “pamphlet file,” sometimes known as a “vertical file,” also contains biographical information, including newspaper articles, obituaries, and the occasional genealogical research papers done by others.
- We hold town and city directories from Hartford and surrounding towns (including Farmington and Unionville of course!), between 1907 and 2006. The bulk are from the late 1920s to the late 1970s.
I will add that we hold Farmington High School yearbooks from about 1924 to 2024. Some of them are digitized and available in our digital collections on the CT Digital Archive. Link to CTDA. Finally, we have had a handful of donations of genealogical material for Farmington families. Some details on these materials are accessible through our catalog. Link to library catalog.
The CT State Library has an amazing research guide containing links to searchable databases and does a good job of explaining where records exist in which years. The digital “Connecticut Town Guides” provide great information if the town you’re researching was once part of another town. Plus…it is fun just to poke around on the State Library’s website! Link to CSL History & Genealogy Unit.
If you think you might want to start looking into your family history, the general advice appears to be to get yourself a family chart and a research log, start with yourself and work backwards, and get as much information as you can from your family members first. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) provides free charts in a variety of formats, census help, and tutorials on researching your ancestors. Link to NARA Genealogy resources.
There is an overwhelming amount of fascinating material in the Farmington Room, and I will be learning new things every single day that I’m in here for quite some time! The most rewarding part is seeing researchers use what they find here to deepen their knowledge of a topic, whether a community art project or their own family.
Happy researching everyone!
Jerusha
PS: This winter, I am planning to gradually expand the hours during which you can walk into the Farmington Room without an appointment. Watch this space for updates! If you’d like to let me know what days of the week and times of day you’d likely come in to do research, feel free to email me: jneely@farmingtonlibraries.org or stop me if you see me around the library! I will take all suggestions into consideration.