Connecticut village names and locations

When researching Connecticut genealogy, you might come across place names that don't correspond with the 169 official towns and cities in the state.

This is because Connecticut, like all New England states, heavily uses the village system. For example, the main campus of the University of Connecticut is in Storrs, Connecticut -- but that won't appear on a town map of the state, because Storrs is actually a village within the town of Mansfield. So for a ancestor who was born in Storrs, you'd need to set up the location like this:

Place Name: Storrs
Address Line 1:
Address Line 2:
Address Line 3:
City: Mansfield
Postal Code:
County: Tolland County
State/Province: Connecticut
Country: United States

I am working on getting all of the major villages added to Geni's location manager, so that they'll show up for you when you start typing in place names. But in the meantime, I'm sharing these resources just in case you ever need them:

1) https://ctstatelibrary.org/cttowns/counties -- this is a list of all official towns and cities in the state, along with their counties, the dates they were incorporated, and the towns they used to be part of (if applicable)

2) https://portal.ct.gov/SOTS/Register-Manual/Section-VII/Towns-Villag... -- this is a list of all of the villages, depots, CDPs, etc., along with their parent towns and cities

I've backed up both of these pages in our project's Documents area at https://www.geni.com/projects/State-of-Connecticut/media/41514

I should add that if you don't know an ancestor's village, *that's totally okay*! Using the town name only is perfectly fine. But if you do have the village name, it can be incredible helpful (especially for finding church and school records), so whenever you do have it, please go ahead and put it in the "Place name" field.