Dr Susan Snell – Freemasons in India: finding your ancestors at the Museum of Freemasonry
Susan aims to explain how and when freemasonry started in India and what records are available at the Museum of Freemasonry to help you research your ancestors. She will explain how freemasonry operated and what information you can find out about freemasons. She will use case studies to show how military members of travelling lodges followed the drum around the continent. Using records available in the Museum’s archives, she will reveal how they can help you trace locations and personal information about freemasons, an important resource where detailed Census returns are not available. Join Susan to find out more and unravel the secrets behind this ‘hidden’ archive!
A professional archivist and records manager, Susan Snell has worked at the Museum of Freemasonry since 2005. Her career includes experience in a wide spectrum of archives, including local authority, business and museum repositories. Susan is keen on promoting and encouraging access to the Museum’s archive collections and has a particular interest in eighteenth and early nineteenth century resources. Her role includes providing advice on archive resources at the Museum to researchers, who range from freemasons investigating the history of Lodges and Chapters to family historians seeking details about members. Susan has helped many researchers looking into the relationship between freemasonry and wining and dining, sport, theatre, publishing, railways, art and design, or its role within local communities in England or overseas. She has a special interest in members of the Parsi (Zoroastrian) community in India and London and has written articles about freemasonry in India. Susan supports colleagues by working on exhibitions and has curated several displays in the Library, such as sport and freemasonry for the 2012 Olympics, Squaring the Triangle to commemorate the bi-centenary of the UK’s first anti-slavery legislation, The Generous Dentist on the Masonic girls’ school instigator, Bartholomew Ruspini and William Perfect, an 18th century doctor and early Provincial Grand Master of Kent. She has published several articles on various subjects in peer reviewed journals.
