Patrick Conway Collection

Individual Collection name: Patrick Conway Collection

Repository name: Special Collections in Performing Arts,
Performing Arts Library, University of Maryland

Type: Scrapbooks, programs, photographs, and recordings

Collection dates: 1906-1980, most items, 1908-1928

Extent: 2 linear feet

Description: The Conway Collection contains scrapbooks and scrapbook pages of newspaper clippings, programs, advertisements, correspondence, and mementoes regarding Patrick Conway. It also contains programs from Patrick Conway concerts held between 1919 and 1928, seventeen photographs (both candid and portraits), and twenty-eight 78-rpm sound recordings of the Conway Band. Several magazine articles are also included in the collection, as well as other documents about Conway's career.

Statement of provenance: Gift of Mrs. Katherine Conway White, 1979, with additions donated by George Howard.

Finding Aid: A supplementary box inventory is available in the repository.

SCPA shelf location: SCPA Collections Room, Aisle C

Access: Materials from this collection must be used in the Performing Arts Library's Irving and Margery Morgan Lowens Special Collections Room, 10 to 5, Monday through Friday. Please make an appointment with the curator.

Biography: Along with Patrick S. Gilmore, John Philip Sousa, and Arthur Pryor, Patrick Conway stands as a major contributor to the history of bands in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Patrick ("Patsy") Conway was born on July 4, 1867 near Troy, New York. He received his early formal education at the Homer Academy. Following the death of his father, when Conway was fifteen, he went to work at a carriage factory. It was there that he was taught to play the cornet by a fellow worker, who was also director of the Homer Band. Conway joined the band and within a few years became its director. He continued his formal music education at Ithaca Conservatory and Cornell University.

In 1895 Conway moved to Ithaca to teach music at Cornell. He organized the Cornell Cadet Band and remained its director for thirteen years. During this period, Conway organized and directed the Ithaca Band, in addition to directing the Lyceum Theater orchestra. During the summer season the Ithaca Band, which changed its name to Patrick Conway and His Band around 1908, toured the mid-western and western United States performing at state fairs and expositions, including the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915. Conway's band also had regular summer engagements for over twenty years at Willow Grove Park, Philadelphia, and Young's Pier, Atlantic City.

In addition to its concert schedule, Patrick Conway and His Band recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company, and were featured on the "General Motors Family Hour" radio shows during the 1928-1929 seasons.

During the First World War, Conway was commissioned as a captain in the U.S. Army Air Service and organized the air corps' first band. Following the war, Conway returned to Ithaca and founded the Conway Military Band School as an affiliate of the Ithaca Conservatory of Music. He taught at the school from 1922 until his death.

Conway married the former Alice Randall in 1893. They had two children: Paul (1894-1920), who played in the Conway band and died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-six, and Katherine (b. 1896).

Conway died on June 10, 1929, following an operation.

Life Chronology:
1867            Born near Troy, New York, July 4
1893            Marries Alice Randall
1895            Joins the faculty of Cornell University
1908            Ithaca Band becomes Patrick Conway and His Band
1915            Performs at the Panama-Pacific Exposition
1922            Founds the Conway Military Band School
1928-1929   Band featured on General Motors Family Hour show
1929            Dies, June 10, 1929

Series Arrangement:
Series I: Scrapbooks
Series II: Programs
Series III: Photographs
Series IV: Printed Materials
Series V: Sound Recordings

Series Description:
Series I, Scrapbooks, contains three scrapbooks and two groups of scrapbook pages. The scrapbooks contain newspaper clippings, concert programs and advertisements, correspondence, and mementoes regarding Patrick Conway's life and career as band director, and educator.

Series II, Programs, contains programs for performances of Patrick Conway and His Band from 1919 to 1928. Additional programs and publicity materials are found in the scrapbooks of Series I.

Series III, Photographs, contains seventeen photographs taken between ca. 1906 and 1929. These photographs were removed from the Patrick Conway scrapbook (see Series IA). Included here are ten portraits of Conway, five candid photographs of Conway and others, one portrait of Conway's brother Martin, and one picture postcard.

Series IV, Printed Materials, contains articles about Patrick Conway from between 1922 and 1927; a biographical sketch of Conway, letters from Katherine Conway White to Acton Ostling, an unpublished essay on Conway by Karen E. Haun, and other materials.

Series V, Sound Recordings, contained twenty-eight shellac, 78-rpm sound recordings of the Conway Band directed by Patrick Conway for the Victor and Okeh labels. The disks have been removed and are inventoried with the ABA Sound Recording Collection.

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