Archives West Finding Aid

Herbert S. Auerbach was born on 4 October, 1882 in Salt Lake City, Utah. After graduating from high school in Salt Lake City in 1896, he attended classes in Germany and Switzerland receiving diplomas in industrial studies in 1898 and 1899. In 1905 Auerbach graduated from Columbia University with a degree in mining engineering and in the following year Herbert earned a master's degree in electrometallurgy from Columbia University. Prior to serving as a major in the U.S. Army in World War I, he worked as a manager for mining, real estate and department store firms in Idaho, Colorado, and Utah. Auerbach returned to his pre-war position as an executive in his family's Salt Lake City department store following World War I, and eventually became its president. Business interests represented only one part of a man whose intellectual and cultural pursuits and accomplishments were multi-faceted and extraordinary. A historian by avocation, Herbert translated Father Escalante's journal, authored several articles in western history, and was president of the Utah Historical Society's Board of Control from 1936-1945. In addition to being a colllector of Western Americana, Auerbach purchased numerous Joseph Smith family possessions which he donated to the LDS Church. Among his many other achievements were that of a concert violinist, a poet, a composer of over one hundred ballads and religious songs, a philanthropist and a state legislator. He died on 19 March 1945 and his funeral took place in the LDS Church's Assembly Hall in Salt Lake City.