Archives West Finding Aid

Custodial History

The chain of ownership of these photo albums is unknown.

Acquisition Information

It is unclear when or how these photograph albums came to be in the Archives, although is almost certain that they arrived at the Library prior to the establishment of the Archives in 1968 because early references to some of the images in the album indicate they are from the "UM Museum," a precursor of the Archives.

Processing Note

The albums likely arrived at what is now the Archives prior to 1968. In 1972 some images in the albums were individually described in a card catalog for the photograph collection. When an item was individually described the image number assigned to it was written directly on the image in the photograph album (ie. 72-757). In some cases images in these albums were identified as being from Mary Elrod Ferguson, though it is clear now that Ferguson likely received the albums during the time she was in charge of the UM Museum and that she was in no way responsible for their creation or production. During a review of unidentified photograph albums in 2009 it became apparent that these three albums belonged together and they were placed in the same box and described for the first time as the William Harvey Harrison photograph albums. No attempt was made to remove the image numbers written on the images in the 1970s.