The Conway Collection
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Country
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GB
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Language of name of institution
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eng
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Contact information: postal address
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West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DR
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Contact information: phone number
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0044 (0) 1223 333000
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Contact information: web address
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https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/
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Reference number
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Add. 7226-7306
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Type of reference number
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Archival reference number
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Title (official language of the state)
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The Conway Collection
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Language of title
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eng
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Creator / accumulator
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George Robert Graham Conway
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Date note
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16th century/18th century
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Transcriptions and translations: mid-20th century
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Language(s)
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eng
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spa
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Extent
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81 storage units
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Type of material
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Textual Material
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Scope and content
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The Conway collection is composed of 81 volumes of transcripts from the Archivio General de la Nación and other archives. The major part of the documents consists of transcripts and translations of trials and other documentation from the archives of the Inquisition of Mexico. Most of the trials are related to English individuals who were tried by the Inquisition of Mexico, but there are some examples of trials against Iberian conversos. It is the case of Luis Carvajal, governor of the province of Nuevo Leon, prosecuted in 1588-91 for observing the Law of Moses (Add. 7270-7271). Another example is Thomas Treviño de Sobrenome (Add. 7272-7275), a Spanish converso who had arrived in America after fleeing from Spain in 1611 and established himself in Oaxaca as a merchant. Treviño's first trial ended with a lenient sentence but, in 1645, he was arrested again. Treviño perished at stake in the Great Auto-de-Fé of April 1649 in Mexico City.
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Archival history
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The materials that compose this collection were collected by G. R. G. Conway from 1923 to 1943. They were bequeathed to the Cambridge University Library by Conway towards the end of Conway's life. The collection was catalogued in 1950, as Additional MSS with the numbers 7226 to 7306.
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Administrative / Biographical history
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George Robertson Graham Conway (1873–1951) was born in Southampton and educated at Tauntons School and Hartley University College, Southampton. In 1898, he was appointed resident engineer for the City of Aberdeen, in which role he designed and constructed the Girdleness Outfall Scheme, and was the engineer of the re-building of Union Bridge and other public works in the city. He moved to Mexico in 1907, where he was appointed chief engineer and official representative of the Monterrey Railway, Light and Power Company, and the Monterrey Water and Drainage Company of Monterrey, Mexico; for whom he designed and oversaw the construction of the first extensive water and drainage, electric light and power, and tramway systems for the city. In 1910, he was appointed chief engineer and assistant general manager of the British Columbia Electric Railway Company, Vancouver (Canada) but returned to Mexico in 1916 as managing director (from 1927, president) of the Mexican Light and Power Company Ltd. and the Mexico Tramways Company, Mexico, D.F. He resigned from the Mexico Tramways Company in 1942 and died in Mexico City on May 20, 1951.
Conway published several professional papers in engineering periodicals, but his real research interest lay in Mexico's Early Colonial history. By 1920, he had built up an extensive personal library and spent over 20,000 dollars having Inquisition records in Mexican archives and elsewhere transcribed and translated.
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(source: University of Aberdeen Library online catalogue)
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System of arrangement
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The volumes are arranged following Conway's original numbering, but catalogued as Additional MSS with the numbers 7226 to 7306.
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Existence and location of originals
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Archivo General de la Nación
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Author of the description
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Joana Rodrigues and Carla Vieira, 2022
