Rye Museum Talk: The Worlds of the Jeake Family of Rye

The next instalment in Rye Museum’s popular online Zoom lecture series is next Thursday, April 8 at 7pm. The speaker is Anne Murphy, historian of early modern economic and social history and Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Portsmouth. Her talk is about the Jeake family of Rye. The Jeakes have attracted writers and scholars for decades because they left behind an enormous volume of personal letters, diaries and other papers describing daily life in the town. In her words:

Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries members of the Jeake family exchanged hundreds of letters. They covered a wide variety of topics. Family matters sat easily alongside business and were generally intertwined with spiritual contemplation, an ever-present concern for the health of all correspondents and their connections, and the exchange of news, especially on religious or political matters. During this talk we will see how the letters can be used to reconstruct the lives of Samuel and Elizabeth Jeake and their children and we will explore how what was left unwritten can tell us just as much as the words on the page.

If you would like to attend the April lecture, send an email to info@ryemuseum.co.uk for instructions. If you attended the March talk, you’ll need to get in touch again for this one. Talks are free for museum members and £5 for non-members. It’s worth noting that membership is as low as £12 for an individual per year. If you think you might want to attend more than one talk, consider joining instead. Details on our website or by email.

Image Credits: Rye News library .