Newtown, Connecticut Deaths – 1890-1899

The loss of the 1890 U.S. Census presents a great inconvenience for genealogists.  A few years ago my hubby and I talked about how we could create a census substitute for Newtown, CT. We pulled together four town documents: the 1890 Grand list, 1890 Voters list, 1890 New Electors, and information from the school register for 1890.  An article was published in Connecticut Ancestry, and the databases can be found at the Genealogy Club of Newtown's website. 

In 2010 I decided to develop a database of Newtown Deaths for the 1890s. I went to the town clerk’s office with laptop and began the project. The problem I ran into was that the book was so large, I had to get up, take a step to the right to read the information on the facing page. This slowed the progress immensely!  When I mentioned this to my husband he offered to help. We continued this project armed with a long ruler, him reading and me typing.

What I found most intriguing was this information included the deceased’s place of birth, cause of death, and parents’ names.

 Persons of black descent are shown in bold.

Number of Newtown Deaths by year:

1890 – 66

1891 – 57

1892 – 81

1893 – 55

1894 – 55

1895 – 36

1896 – 51

1897 – 57

1898 – 46

1899 - 66

Keep in mind handwriting legibility and name and medical term spelling variations are inherent in any document.  Over the next few days I will post pages of this database. Because it is so large, I have not included the column of parents’ names, but am happy to provide should one of these folks be yours.