Follow the evidence.

Start with a name.

Open a collection and search a surname, given name, year, or keyword. Try alternate spellings: historical records can use different surnames or transcription variants.

1. Names & burials: person-level references and research leads. Filter by recorded section clue or evidence type.
2. Scans: original historical pages with searchable OCR. Search here for relatives and other names mentioned in a biography.
3. Sources: publications, repositories, contacts, and the status of records still being pursued.
4. City death indexes: separate Meriden and New Haven reference sets. Neither has a cemetery field or establishes cemetery burial. Saint Bernard also has a separate early Catholic dataset: Christ Church records do not establish Saint Bernard interment.

Search terms are combined: “Edward Sage 1902” looks for all three terms. Partial words can match. An absent search result does not establish that a person is absent from the cemetery.

Research an institution.

The Meriden boys’ home and New Haven orphan asylum collections search their acquired historical OCR as well as the catalog. Start with a name, then confirm it in the original scan. Reported death totals do not identify individuals; a death at a school or home does not establish burial on its grounds. Keep the School for Boys separate from the Curtis Home, and the New Haven Orphan Asylum separate from St. Francis.

Mary Hart’s expanded photo catalog links to credited publishers. Publication dates and camera dates are recorded separately when known. A grave photograph documents a monument and setting; it cannot by itself verify the cause or circumstances of death.

Read an advertisement as evidence.

Industrial and Savin Rock collections bring together trade catalogs, advertisements, postcards and historical accounts. An advertisement shows how a business presented itself at a particular date; product claims and picturesque factory views should be checked against independent records. A directory confirms a listed name and address in its publication year, which may differ from the year a business opened.

Keep company identities separate. Meriden Britannia and Meriden Silver Plate were distinct manufacturers before International Silver’s formation. The West Haven rendering collection identifies the Connecticut Fat Rendering and Fertilizing Corporation at Allingtown and distinguishes a separately listed New Haven Rendering Company. Use each collection’s photographs and advertisements filters, and search its acquired source text for additional names and addresses.

Explore hospitals, routes and recreation.

Hospital founding acts, admission dates, name changes and closures describe different events. The new collections keep these distinctions visible. Undercliff’s early sources concern tuberculosis care; the regional directory separately identifies psychiatric institutions. Public annual reports record an administrative perspective and do not replace individual records.

Use the maps and routes filters in the trolley collection. Check each map’s date and legend before comparing routes. The roller-rink collection preserves addresses and uncertain names, with photographic and advertising gaps clearly identified.

Understand what supports a record.

Every cemetery reference has an evidence label. The labels describe the available support; they are not certifications of identity or burial.

Historical burial reference

A period publication explicitly describes burial in the cemetery. Check the page image and confirm the town, date and person with another independent record. Some entries rely on surrounding Meriden context.

Hale transcription

A selected transcription from the 1934 cemetery inscription survey. A headstone survey can miss unmarked graves, lost stones, and burials after the survey. Complete surveys for these collections have not yet been obtained.

Planned burial notice

An obituary describes an intended funeral or interment. The notice alone does not prove that the burial happened as planned.

Unverified research lead

Names and details found in search-index results for memorial or genealogy pages. The underlying page, source citation or marker photograph still needs review.

Dates: blanks mean unknown. Partial dates and uncertainty are retained. A matching name and date in another index may refer to a different person.

Read the original page.

Open a scan to see the image, its source, related names, and uncorrected OCR text. Use “Full image” to inspect small print. Where a compiled searchable PDF is available, it includes the recovered historical pages. Newer collections also provide individual images, searchable text and offline HTML.

OCR can misread letters, numbers, columns and names. Confirm any quotation, date or relationship against the scan before using it in a report, classroom resource, or family history.

Keep the source attached.

Each person and scan has a permanent page and a “Copy citation” button. The citation includes the collection, stable record identifier, edition date and original source.

For formal research, add the original publication’s printed page number when visible and the date you accessed it. The PDF page number is the position inside our compiled PDF, which can differ from the original printed page number.

Preserve disagreements between sources. Document the reason for a correction instead of replacing uncertain details without explanation.

Follow the missing-record leads.

The West Cemetery archive is an initial recovery collection. Original death certificates, burial permits, a complete inscription survey and an authenticated lot plan have not yet been acquired.

• Meriden Public Library: its holdings list the 1934 Hale survey in volumes 26 and 27. Request the complete West Cemetery / Old Cemetery entry, code 211-10, including all page headings, indexes and any map. Library holdings.
• Meriden City Clerk: ask which cemetery-specific burial returns, permit registers and death records survive independently of the association. City Clerk vital records.
• Connecticut State Library and Meriden Historical Society: follow catalog references for survey copies, association papers, maps, family files and funeral-home records.

Download the recovery guide and five records-request drafts. These are unsent drafts. Contact the custodian for holdings and copying costs.

Saint Bernard Cemetery, New Haven

For the interment register and authenticated plot plan, contact the Saint Lawrence management office, (203) 624-3980. The cemetery is at 520 Columbus Avenue in New Haven; its managing office is in West Haven. This collection does not assert that Saint Bernard’s records were lost.

The New Haven Museum’s MSS 23 inventory locates Saint Bernard’s Hale survey, code 215-6, in Box 2, folders D–F, pages 1157–1411, with a separate Box 3 name index. MSS 80, Box 26 contains further military burial lists. Request the actual pages; the finding aid is not the full survey.

Some Christ Church memorials were transferred to Saint Bernard without demonstrated reinterment of remains. The 605-row related table stays separate from cemetery entries. Its raw dates and collective entries require source review. The included 1900 history describes an 1851 blessing; the 2019 article describes 1854 consecration. Preserve that discrepancy for further research.

Download the Saint Bernard guide and request drafts. Aronsen et al.’s 2019 article is available from the SGC media library; its supplementary table remains in the download. Both are CC BY 4.0; retain their attribution when reusing them.

Mary “Midnight Mary” Hart

The Mary Hart collection brings together operator-index extracts, six historical page scans and a catalog of external newspapers, photographs and folklore. Her indexed grave is Evergreen Avenue, plot 50, grave 4. The operator’s October 18 date conflicts with the monument’s October 15; retain both until the original ledger is checked.

The 1872 directory and 1877 Yale obituary supply family-identity leads with unresolved contradictions. Photographs of a monument do not constitute lifetime portraits. Download the research guide and unsent requests for the death entry, burial ledger, newspaper notices, Hale survey and related probate files.

Church burial & death records

The New Haven and West Haven church collection includes the 605-row Catholic table, 27 Center Church annual death entries, one correction, and 1,441 searchable historical pages. Search the Historical pages tab for additional names in nine complete OCR volumes. These are source pages, not a count of burials.

West Haven First Congregational volumes 8, 10 and 11 contain cataloged death and funeral subseries, but their scans have not been obtained. Admission dates, dismissal dates and death dates need careful distinction. OCR may lose the bold type used to identify crypt inscriptions. Each source has its own coverage, access and citation notes.

Treat plot labels as clues.

Section and lot labels in this archive have not been connected to authenticated grave coordinates. A survey’s transcription order can suggest proximity, but it is not an internal grave map.

Preserve exact wording and original page order. Keep provisional observation numbers separate from historic lot numbers, and record the source and accuracy of every location. Do not assume relatives share a plot or that a space without a visible marker is unused.

Respect source rights and credits.

The included historical book pages were published in 1872, 1875, the nineteenth-century Yale obituary volume, 1900, 1902 and 1906 and are public domain in the United States. Keep the publication and digitizing institution credits with any reproduced page.

Modern memorial photographs, newspaper transcriptions, and linked websites may have separate rights. A link in this catalog is not a license to reproduce their content. The included newspaper-derived entry is a factual abstract; its original clipping is not included.

The SGC bookplate is the archive’s contemporary identity. It is a contemporary logo, not a historical cemetery artifact.