Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1936-1958 (Creation)
Level of description
Fonds
Extent and medium
13 cm of textual records
44 photographs : b&w ; 26 cm x 21 cm or smaller
70 artefacts
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Thomas Arthur Reed, musician, author, and historian, was born on 25 September, 1871 and was raised in Toronto. He was the son of William and Isabella Joyce Reed. He attended Dufferin School and Jarvis Collegiate Institute before entering the Toronto Conservatory of Music, where he obtained an ATCM (Gold Medal, Theory) in 1900. He then entered Trinity College, Toronto, and graduated with a Bachelor of Music in 1901. He became an organist at St. Augustine’s Church and started a choir. Reed had been a pupil of Augustus Vogt, the organist at the Jarvis Street Baptist Church, and in 1894, when Vogt founded the Mendelssohn Choir, Reed become the Choir’s secretary, a position he held for close to thirty years. In 1906 Reed began working at the University of Toronto as a clerk in the bursar’s office and in 1914 was appointed secretary of the Athletic Association, a position he held until his retirement in 1947. Reed also served as a member of the executive committee of the Corporation of Trinity College, president and member of the York Pioneers, and a
member of the Ontario Historical Society.
Reed was an authority on the early history of Toronto and, from 1921, lectured extensively on the history of Toronto to audiences around the city. He used lantern slides during these lectures and was reported to have a collection of over six-hundred pictures and photographs documenting Toronto from its beginnings in the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. He annotated programmes of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, 1909-1929. He authored "Our Royal Town of York" (1929); "The Historic Value of Street Names" (1939); "The Scaddings, a Pioneer Family" (1940); "The Blue and White" (1944), a record of fifty years of athletics at the University of Toronto; and "A History of the University of Trinity College, 1852-1952" (1952). His wife, Claudia, established a scholarship in his name at Innis College, University of Toronto.
Reed married Claudia Marguerite Stuttaford (b.1897) on 22 June 1920. Their daughter, Eleanor Margaret, married John Blake Gartshore in 1947.
Thomas Arthur Reed died on 12 March, 1958 in Toronto and Claudia Reed died on 15 April 1988 in Ancaster, Ontario. Eleanor Gartshore died in Ancaster on 11 November 1980.
Repository
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Unknown.
Content and structure area
Scope and content
Fonds consists primarily of research notes and typescript drafts of biographies and histories that Reed was either engaged in writing or was annotating. Fonds also contains photographs and printing plates with photographs and illustrations used in his book A History of Trinity College 1852-1952.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
Materials have been arranged by the archivist into the following series
- Research and notes
- Photographs
- Printing Plates
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Open
Conditions governing reproduction
Various copyright holders. Researchers must obtain permission to publish any part of the fonds.
Language of material
- English
Script of material
Language and script notes
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Finding aids
Uploaded finding aid
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Related units of description
Notes area
Alternative identifier(s)
Access points
Subject access points
Place access points
Name access points
Genre access points
Description control area
Description identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Dates of creation revision deletion
06/17/2019