Opening Up The Ivory Tower
Click here for more on books by Ruth A. Symes
[This article first appeared in the now obsolete Ancestors Magazine 2008]
For the
last eight centuries, hundreds of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest and
brightest young people have lived and studied among Cambridge University’s
ancient courtyards. It’s possible that your ancestors were among them. If you
would like to find out more about your academic forebears, there’s never been a
more auspicious time to do so because next year, 2009, the university
celebrates 800 years of existence. It was in 1209 that a group of scholars from
Oxford fell out with local townsfolk. Some moved to East Anglia to set up a
rival academic institution. In honour of this great occasion, there will be an ambitious year-long programme of events in
the Cambridge itself, across the nation and around the world (see panel).
The 800th Anniversary Year
In 2009, Cambridge
University will celebrate its 800th anniversary. Events will focus
on the best aspects of its rich history and will also look forward to the
future. The University will reflect on the myriad achievements, milestones
and world-changing ideas born within its walls from the establishment of the
fundamentals of physics to the discovery of the structure of DNA: from the
transformative thinking of great Cambridge philosophers, poets and artists,
to the groundbreaking work of its many Nobel Prize winners.
Planned events for
2009 include a concert in London, a Winter Light Finale and a series of
talks, discussions and debates based around ‘800 years of Cambridge ideas’. Events
paying tribute to that landmark will also be a strong feature of the
University’s famous Science Festival, as well as its new Festival of Ideas.
If you would like more details about any of the planned
events, please contact Sarah Collins, Communications Officer (sarah.collins@admin.cam.ac.uk
or 01223 748995).
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Traditionally, students who graduated from Cambridge came
from a narrow range of backgrounds. Until the University Test Act of 1871,
students were required (at the end of their period of study) to subscribe to
the 39 articles of the Church of England – doctrines that differentiated the
Anglican faith from both Calvinism and Catholicism. This meant that, before the
last quarter of the nineteenth century,
the vast majority of students came from Church of England backgrounds. A
few non-conformists did study at Cambridge but were not allowed to take their
degrees. The same is true of a few Jewish students (including members of the
Rothschild family) and some Catholics (who were allowed to study at the
University only after changes in the law made in 1793).
The class backgrounds of Cambridge students have varied over
time. The medieval student body was dominated by sons of the East Anglian
yeomanry and their urban equivalent. From the sixteenth century onwards, the
student population came increasingly from the ranks of the aristocracy and
gentry. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the class background of
students has been gradually widening to include members of the middle and lower
classes. Female students did not study at Cambridge until 1869 when a few were
able to attend the newly-founded Girton College (for more about women at the
university, see below).
Famous graduates of
Cambridge include Isaac Newton, William
Wordsworth, and Charles Darwin. Over
80 Nobel Prize Winners have passed through the university’s hallowed halls and other former students
include eminent politicians, musicians, writers and thinkers. Your ancestor may
have been one of these, or he or she may have been one of the many other
private individuals who have gone out, often quietly and unsung, to try to
transform the world.
Where do I start?
If you are interested in finding
out more about an ancestor who studied at Cambridge, it is important to be
aware that the University is administered both through a central system and
through individual colleges (of which there are currently 31). You may know or
suspect that your ancestor attended Cambridge but you may not know to which of
the many colleges he or she belonged. The university archivists can search for
this information on your behalf, but it may be easier for to consult one of the
printed sources below (depending on the time period in which you are
interested). These sources should be available in all good reference libraries.
University Records
Students Pre-1900
To discover more about an ancestor who attended Cambridge
before 1900, the easiest method is through the following book:
J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses : a biographical list of all known
students, graduates and holders of office at the University of Cambridge, from
the earliest times to 1900. 6 [10] volumes. Cambridge University Press.
1922-1954.
This book gives data from both central
University and College sources. It will
tell you, where known, the date of his matriculation [enrolment] as a member of
the University, his college and his date of graduation. It also provides
information on a student’s career after leaving university where this was
known.
Search for Cambridge Alumni Online
You can do a quick search for Cambridge alumni between
1261 and 1900 at http://www.ancestry.co.uk in the part of the site entitled
‘Directories and Members’ lists’. The specific website address for this is http://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/DB.aspx?dbid=3997. This
list (taken from original data by Venn, J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, CUP,
1922-1954) includes all
known students, graduates, and officers at the University of Cambridge,
England, from 1261 to 1900. It can be searched under name, date of birth,
date of death or keyword. Every entry offers important information which may
include any of the following: notable accomplishments, occupation, birth
date, birth place, other schooling, spouse's name, parent's names, siblings
and other important associations.
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Students 1901-1912
For this period, there is following published source:
B. Benham and C.J. Stonebridge, The book of matriculations and degrees: a
catalogue of those who have been matriculated or admitted to any degree in the
University of Cambridge from 1901 to 1912. (Cambridge University Press,
1915).
For each student, this provides simply the name, college,
date of matriculation (i.e. formal enrolment) and degree. There is no further
biographical information included and, for extra detail, enquirers should
contact the college concerned.
Students from 1913-mid 1960
If your ancestor attended the university during the early to mid twentieth
century, you should contact the archivists directly at Cambridge University
Archives, Cambridge University Library, West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DR
(e-mail:archives@lib.cam.ac.uk). There is no single published source for this
period and the university archivists tend to answer all alumni enquiries
themselves rather than invite scholars in to consult the original records. This
is because the main record series comprises a great many abbreviations and
vocabulary peculiar to Cambridge. The archivists feel that it is easier for them
to extract data on behalf of family history researchers than to be on hand to
explain the abbreviations each time somebody visits.
Students from the mid 1960s onwards
If your ancestor was at Cambridge after the mid 1960s, then
his or her records will have been computerised. To find out more contact
Student Administration and Records, 10 Peas Hill, Cambridge CB2 3PN; e-mail: student.records@admin.cam.ac.uk),
but be aware that much of this information will be subject to Data Protection.
College Records
If you are to understand anything at all about your
ancestor’s time at Cambridge, you must get to know something about his/her
college. Today each college has a website which will tell you something about
its history (see full list of websites below). The college is where your
ancestor will have slept, dined and socialised for a period of three years at
least. During that time, the college will have been responsible for his/her
welfare and at least some of his/her tuition – in the form of small group or
one-to-one tutorials (known as supervisions). You may find out something about
your ancestor’s intellectual predilections since each college had – and in many
cases, still maintains - its own
well-defined cultural and/or political outlook. King’s college, for example,
has long been associated with left-wing views.
The
variety of sources held by individual colleges varies enormously. Most hold
comprehensive institutional archives but these are of little direct relevance
to the family historian. More personal information about individual students
comes in many shapes and forms and may include some or all of the following:
·
handwritten (and later typewritten) matriculation registers
·
photographic records – including matriculation and graduation
photographs in which your ancestor might appear. There may also be photographs
of sports teams and other societies
·
records of the college societies and student organisations to
which your ancestor might have belonged
·
War Memorials listing those members of college who died in the
First and Second World Wars
·
collections of articles and ephemera about the college in the past
·
college magazines and websites which may contain
information such as recent obituaries, lists of Fellows and articles on
important former members of the college.
If your
ancestor was particularly famous, then the college may hold his or her
collected papers. Christ’s College archives, for example, includes the papers
of Charles Stuart Calverley (1831-1884),
poet; Charles Darwin (1809-1882), naturalist; Douglas Rayner Hartree
(1897-1958), mathematical physicist; John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861),
botanist; Henry More (1614-1687), theologian; William Henry Denham Rouse
(1863-1950), classical scholar; and Charles Lesingham Smith (1806-1878),
mathematician; among others.
The records of three colleges - Queens’, Trinity and Girton - which might
be of use to a family historian are featured here. To find out about records of
genealogical interest held at other colleges, you should contact the relevant
college archivist or librarian. A full list of colleges and their contact
details appears below.
Some general tips
When
contacting a college archivist or librarian and asking them to do a search on
your behalf, make sure that you give as much and as accurate information about
your ancestor’s name as possible. For female students who might have had
several surnames in their lifetimes, this is especially important. Make sure
also that you give as much date information as possible. The date of birth or
the date at which the student ‘went up to’ [started at] Cambridge are
particularly useful. If you have the date of your ancestor’s death and know the
age at death, this can help the archivist or librarian estimate the dates
between which your ancestor was a student at the college.
Searching
the Cambridge archives for your ancestors may give you numerous other family
history leads. For example, College War Memorials may help you to date a death
and discovering which college an ancestor belonged may enable you to find out
which school he or she previously attended. King’s College, for instance, was orginially to be a college specifically for
boys from Eton and it was not until 1865 that the first non-Etonian undergraduates
arrived to study there.
But do
remember that there is some information about your ancestor’s time at Cambridge
that you are unlikely to discover. Colleges will generally not, for example,
divulge information about the social background of individual students or their
behaviour whilst at Cambridge, for example. And, in most cases, you are
unlikely to find out which room your ancestor inhabited or which career he went
on to do from college records. Remember also that recent records on students at
Cambridge will be subject to Data Protection.
Queens’ College
Contact details:
http://www.queens.cam.ac.uk
College Librarian
Queens’ College
Silver Street
Cambridge
Queens’ College
was first founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou (the Queen of Henry VI) and
then refounded in 1465 by Elizabeth Woodville (the Queen of Edward IV). It
straddles the River Cam - its two halves joined by the famous ‘Mathematical
Bridge.’
The
college holds matriculation registers from 1886 – 1988. These may be
consulted by the public on request. Unfortunately, individual student files,
going back to the 1860s (though not complete until the 1950s), cannot be
accessed by anyone other than the student him or herself.
The annual magazine, Queens’ Record, began publishing obituaries of
college members in the 1990s, though some articles in earlier issues also
cover outstanding personalities who graduated at Queens’. Recent copies of The
Record are available on the college website.
A
comprehensive list of the Fellows of Queens’ College is available on the
College web site.
The
Queens’ College War Memorial listing the names of those members of College
killed in the First and Second World Wars can be viewed in the Chapel at
times when the College is open to the public, or by special request.
The
Queens’ Archive (some of which predates the founding of the College in 1448)
containing documents on all aspects of the college’s history – though not
particularly on individual student members - is held in the University
Library.
A useful book on the history of Queens’ College is John
Twigg, A History of Queens’ College, Cambridge 1448-1986, Boydell
Press, 1987.
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Trinity College
Contact details:
http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk
College Archivist:
Trinity College
Cambridge
CB2 1TQ
Trinity College, founded by Henry VIII in 1546, was an
amalgamation of two smaller (even older) institutions: Michaelhouse
(est.1324) and King’s Hall (est.1317). Today, most of the college’s major
buildings date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Trinity is
situated in central Cambridge and its huge and impressive courtyards ensure
that it is one of the most visited of the Cambridge colleges.
Admissions registers
survive for Scholars, Fellows and Officers from 1560 and for ordinary
students from 1635. The earliest contain only the name or signature of the
individual and the date admitted. By the nineteenth century, however, the
admissions books contain details such as father's name, address, school and
tutor's name. College admission records have also been published in five
volumes by W.W.R. Ball and J. Venn in Admissions to Trinity College
Cambridge. The first volume of this contains useful lists of
senior College officers.
If students committed major breaches of discipline the matter came before the
Master and Seniors and any sentence such as ‘rustication’ (a general term for
disciplinary action) was entered in the ‘conclusion books’ which run from
1601 to 1882.
Room
rent books can be used to discover who occupied each room in the period 1825
to 1900 and printed residents lists give similar details for the twentieth
century.
There
are a good series of college (not university) examination records running
from 1801 to 1914.
In
some cases College clubs and societies have deposited their records with the
College Library. The most notable of these is the Boat Club whose records run
from the 1820s.
The
college archivist advises that, in many cases, it is difficult to gain
anything but a skeleton knowledge of an individual's time at Trinity. But,
there are some exceptions, for example, where a student’s letters home have
been donated to the college. It is always worth asking if such sources exist.
See
also: George Macaulay Treveleyan, Trinity College, Cambridge: A History
and Guide, Trinity College, 1962.
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Female Students
Remember that for most of history, the majority of the Cambridge colleges did
not accept women. Female students attended the all-female colleges of Girton
(from 1869) and Newnham (1872). Although they took examinations from 1882
onwards, it was not until 1947/8 that women were able to become full members of
the university and have their degrees recognised.
The originally all-male colleges started to admit women in
1960 and the last college to become co-educational was Magdalene College in
1988. Today, although Girton college now accepts men, Newnham, Lucy Cavendish
and Murray Edwards Colleges do not.
Girton College
Contact details:
http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk
College Archivist
Girton College
Cambridge
CB3 0JG
Tel: 01223-338897
Girton College,
situated two and a half miles outside Cambridge in Girton village, was
established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon. It was the first
residential college for women in England and was originally all female. The
first male Fellow arrived in 1977 and male undergraduates have been admitted
since 1979.
The archives at Girton chart the history of women's campaign for equal rights in
higher education. There are copious institutional records, but of more
interest to family history researchers are the wide range of personal papers
concerning members and supporters of the College from before its foundation
to the present day.
Quite a lot of information exists and, if your ancestor
was at Girton, you should consider visiting the archives (by appointment
only). There are two privately published registers (volume 1 1869-1946 and
volume 2 1944-1969) which provide a
surprisingly rich depth of biographical information relating to students and
which are indexed. These include: names, date and place of birth, parents'
names and occupation(s) [in the earlier years it is just the fathers'
occupations which are listed], marriage and family, education (including
Girton and details of degree(s), courses of study, prizes and scholarships),
career, publications, voluntary work, hobbies, interests, honours, and date
of death. Staff (Mistresses, Fellows and Research Fellows) have entries at
the end of the volumes. A third volume
of the Register (1970-2000) is in preparation but although it will follow the
same format, it is unlikely to be as consistent as the first two volumes
which were compiled at a time long before data protection legislation.
From 1882 until 1969, membership of societies was also
recorded in the College magazine The Girton Review. There is an archival series of Student
Tutorial files from 1913. These sometimes include information about the
membership of college societies. You can even discover the room in which your
ancestor lived (from 1896)
If a visit to Girton is impossible, you can contact the
archivists by email, phone or letter and they will do a limited search on
your behalf for a fee. In the cases of some students, it is possible that
there is even more information – such as obituaries, and news cuttings. A number
of research projects have been undertaken on such matters as the careers
undertaken by Girton students on leaving the college. These too can be
consulted. You will have to pay a fee
for the photocopying of any of the above sources of information.
An
outline of the range and scope of Girton’s archive holdings can be found at
http://www-lib.girton.cam.ac.uk/archive/outline.htm and an electronic search
of the personal papers held at Girton can be conducted via Janus, the
Cambridge union catalogue for archives at http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/ . Not all
holdings are catalogued on Janus yet, and none of the institutional papers
are as yet catalogued in this way. The work to complete this is an on-going
project.
See
also: Girton College,
Girton
College Register, 1869-1946, Cambridge, 1948; B. Megson, J. Lindsay, Girton College, 1869-1959, An Informal
History; W. Heffer for the Girton Historical and
Political Society; (n.d.) ; Barbara
Nightingale Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College, 1922, Hyperion,
PR, 1976; Barbara Stephen, Girton College, 1869-1932, CUP, 1933;
Marilyn Stratherne, Girton: Thirty Years in the Life of a Cambridge
College, Third Millennium, 2005.
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What was Cambridge Like?
Every college in Cambridge has a distinct atmosphere of its
own. Discovering more about the particular college, its rules and regulations,
its architecture, hierarchies, and societies will give you some idea about the
flavour of your ancestor’s time there.
If you
have the time and the inclination, you might want to steep yourself in the
wider archives of a particular college. Otherwise, there are many books on
individual colleges and on the university as a whole. Some of these are
suggested in the reading list below.
Another
method of finding more about your ancestor’s time in Cambridge would be to
discover which famous people attended the university at the same time as him or
her. Reading their autobiographies and memoirs will give you an insight into
the kind of life experienced by your ancestor in the ivory tower. An example of
this is Gwendolen Freeman’s relatively recently published autobiography: Alma
Mater, Memoirs of Girton College, 1926-1929, Girton, 1990.
Remember
that affiliation to Oxbridge colleges – just as to certain public schools
- usually ran in families (often across
many generations). Once you have located your ancestor in the records, you may
hazard a guess that brothers, sons, father and grandfather (or, less often of
course, daughters, sister, mother and grandmother) also attended the same
college. A little help from the college archivist should help you locate the
records of these students as well. Such research can potentially provide
information on many branches of your family tree all at once. In this way,
searching for ancestors in the ivory tower can be an immensely satisfying line
of genealogical enquiry.
Useful Addresses
Cambridge University Archives
Cambridge University Library
West Road
Cambridge CB3 9DR
00 44 1223 333147
Student Administration and Records
10 Peas Hill
Cambridge
CB2 3PN
e-mail: student.records@admin.cam.ac.uk
Useful Books
W.W.R.
Ball and J. Venn in Admissions to Trinity College Cambridge. Macmillan,
1911
B. Benham and C.J. Stonebridge, The book of
matriculations and degrees : a catalogue of those who have been matriculated or
admitted to any degree in the University of Cambridge from 1901 to 1912.
Cambridge University Press, 1915.
Gwendolen
Freeman, Alma Mater, Memoirs of Girton College, 1926-1929, Girton, 1990.
Girton College, Girton College Register, 1869-1946, Cambridge, 1948.
Hewison, Robert (1983). Footlights! – a hundred years of Cambridge
comedy.
Methuen London Ltd.
Elisabeth Leedham-Green,
A Concise History of the University of Cambridge. CUP, 1996.
Barbara Nightingale Stephen,
Emily Davies and Girton College, 1922, Hyperion, PR, 1976.
Barbara Stephen, Girton College, 1869-1932, CUP, 1933
Marilyn Stratherne, Girton: Thirty Years in the Life of a
Cambridge College, Third Millennium, 2005.
George
Macaulay Treveleyan, Trinity College, Cambridge: A History and Guide, Trinity
College, 1962.
John Twigg, A History of Queens’ College, Cambridge
1448-1986, Boydell Press, 1987
J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses : a biographical list of
all known students, graduates and holders of office at the University of
Cambridge, from the earliest times to 1900. 6 volumes Cambridge University
Press. 1922-1954.
Useful Web Addresses
http://www.foundation.cam.ac.uk/index.php
Cambridge Alumni Website
University
Collections:
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections.htm
Cambridge University Library
Other Online
Resources:
http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/ The institutional repository of the University of Cambridge
established in 2003 to facilitate the deposit of digital content of a scholarly
or heritage nature.
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/digital_image_collections/
University of Cambridge digital image collection
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/electronicresources/
University of Cambridge Electronic Resources
http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/ national
gateway to descriptions of archives in UK universities and colleges
http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/
Access to more than 1,800 catalogues of archives held throughout Cambridge
For women's history and social history books - competitive prices and a great service - visit:
Keywords: European ancestors, Europe, ancestry, family history, genealogy, university, universities, England, English, Cambridge
