Archives West Finding Aid

These reports and letters are the earliest records of Montana State Unviersity and encompass the presidency of Augustus M. Ryon and James Reid, from 1894 to 1904. The files contain reports created or recieved by the president's office and general correspondence. Not all years are represented in each named file, but wherever possible all reports known to exist have been included. The reports and correspondence of this series deal with both the instructional activities of the college and the operation of the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station. Some of the early faculty were involved with both activities as well. Reports and other documents are interfiled with correspondence pertaining to the folder subject title. The earliest records of the college created or maintained by Ryon are for the most part absent from this series, although from the preliminary arrangment strategy it is obvious they were intended to be part of this grouping.

Topically labeled folders of correspondence and reports, alphabetically arranged. Most of these files pertain to the routine operation of the college, interactions with federal and state officials, and especially the office of the Chancellor of the Montana University System. Again, the activities of the Montana Agriculture Experiment station are especially prominent, but the reports of the president to the local executive board change over time to ones submitted to the state Board of Education. For the most part correspondence pertaining to the folder's topical label has been retained with the related reports, but a stalled attempt by library personnel was made in the late 1960s to separate the president's correspondence by alphabetical and/or chronological order regardless of the topic. These folders, numbered 4-31 in box 5, have not been disrupted and retain their preliminary sorting order. Folders containing student academic or disciplinary information are restricted and marked with (R).

Reports, papers, correspondence and other records collected or created by Hamilton in the years following his tenure as president of Montana State University. These files may have been part of a larger record group pertaining to the Dean of Men's office but were placed in this collection by the time it was formally accessioned in 1974. As the Dean of Men, Hamilton had much to do with the administration of student affairs, including the registration and regulation of campus organizations and activities. At the same time, Hamilton also functioned as a professor of economics, taking an active role in the planning and establishment of the academic department starting in 1919. The records of both offices have been interfiled in this series and alphabetically arranged.

Personal letters, programs, memorabilia and other items marginally related to Hamilton's professional career. The material in this series may have been discovered as a run of separate folders or, more likely, sorted into their present arrangement by library personnel in the 1960s. Included are materials pertaining to Hamilton's early education in Illinois, his student years at the Union Christian College at Merom, Indiana, and his stint as a teacher and school superintendent in Illinois and Missoula, Montana. The files have been arranged in three broad groupings; folders 1-8 are biographical material such as programs, certificates, clippings, and other memorabilia. Folders 9-26 consist of correspondence. Most of these letters are personal in nature, although a few are congratulatory notes sent to Hamilton by friends and colleagues for his various career appointments, especially the presidency of Montana State College in 1904. The final group of folders, numbers 27-34, are manuscript speeches and essays on educational and historical topics of interest to Hamilton.