Venture off the beaten path with a unique lecture at OGS Conference 2010

Posted by conference on March 29, 2010 under Blog: New Postings, Delights Stream, Innovations Stream, Speakers and Program | Comments are off for this article

Buzz is growing about a unique lecture at the upcoming Ontario Genealogical Society’s Conference 2010.

Patrons and Performances: Finding Connections to the Arts in Early Modern England and Wales will be presented by John A. Geck, a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and the Jackman Genealogical Research Associate for the Records for Early English Drama (REED).

REED is an international project that examines the historical evidence for early theatre, music, and other entertainment in England and Wales from the 12th to the 18th centuries. In particular REED produces detailed information about patrons of the arts, their roles in society and their genealogy, all of which is fully accessible to the public online. The Patrons and Performances website is an excellent example of what an Internet publication be.

This lecture will demonstrate how genealogists researching their British family histories can use the Patrons and Performances website.

As John Reid recently said in his “Anglo-Celtic Connections” blog, “It’s the kind of presentation I look for as an option when I get tired of the usual genealogical fare.”

So you think your ancestors weren’t connected to the arts? Here are five reasons you might want to sit in on this lecture anyway:

• You’d routinely check your ancestors’ names in other databases, so why not this one? Although the website incorporates research from many centuries, both the overall number and those from the lower gentry (e.g. guild members) increase significantly in the later years where you’re most likely to be researching.
• Patrons and Performances has a lot of information on places where our ancestors lived—and amused themselves. The majority of venues are places like town halls, guildhalls and large county manors where all nearby residents were welcome for performances and which were undoubtedly familiar to your ancestors in their hometowns.
• There’s a keyword search that allows you to look for parishes and manors, etc., and find patrons associated with your ancestor’s home. The fate of that patron—in one case a beheading for raising a rebellion against the king—would certainly have caused some turmoil for everyone in the community.
• Many researchers face problems in bridging the gap between the modern and early modern periods. This lecture will address general strategies for overcoming the problem of sparse records in the 1700s. Even if your ancestors do not appear in the Patrons and Performances database, you may pick up some useful methodological suggestions.
• Finally and perhaps most importantly for many researchers, much of the presentation will focus on the sources REED employed to create the Patrons and Performances website. Even for those whose ancestors were not connected to patron families, the bibliography of both print and online sources may be an invaluable resource.

Consider a step or two off the beaten path to hear about this unique project that uses the best of modern technology and scholarship to make some very old information much easier to use.