Alumni Association records on prominent deceased alumni

The Brigham Young University Alumni Association (est. 1893) plays an important role in helping maintain connections between alums and the university. In order to accomplish this work the Alumni Association collects information about alumni, including student information sheets with demographic and contact information. For deceased alumni, these records and associated obituaries are transferred to the Archives (see UA 636).

However, until the late 1980s and early 1990s the Alumni Association kept a separate series of files on what they classified as prominent alumni. These materials, held in the University Archives as UA 1302, include information on a wide range of local and national leaders with associations to the University. In most cases these are graduates, though others included in the collection may have served on campus as professors or administrators.

Hannah A. Stubbs Jones photograph of Provo, Utah mercantile

The files themselves biographical information sheets, as well as newspaper clippings, articles, letters, biographies, autobiographies, and photographs. Most of the files include a range of information about the individual, as well as some contextual information about the university. The folder on Hannah A. Stubbs Jones, the most long-lived of the original students at Brigham Young Academy, included a photograph of a mercantile in downtown Provo that included the side of the Lewis Building.

Similarly, in the file on Marguerite Stewart Olstowski, a successful dancer in New York City, was found a photograph of her with a dance troupe from Provo in 1911.

Marguerite Stewart Olstowski photograph of dance troupe

For a full list of those documented in this collection, please see the finding aid, or contact the University Archivist at cory_nimer@byu.edu or 801-422-6091.