Author(s): Paige Roberts, Lauren Williams, McKelle Garner, Jay Greenland
Mentor(s): Kathleen Broeder
Institution SUU
How do the objects you leave behind affect how you are perceived by strangers after your death? We answered this question through our research of John Laurence Seymour, who is connected to the Special Collections at Southern Utah University through a room dedicated to him and his things. Over the course of the fall 2024 semester of our INFO 4100: Archives class, each of us selected a handful of his objects that reflected Seymour’s interests in life, namely traveling, collecting, and music. This work is being used to enhance the quality of the Seymour Room exhibition and collection. Our goals for this class were to take these objects, discover the provenance and intrinsic value of them, to help make labels, and prepare them to be displayed for the public. Provenance is the origin and story of an object. Intrinsic value is based solely on what the object is by itself. Our selections were our first introduction to who Seymour was. Some of the methods we used were consulting other institutions and experts on topics relating to our objects. We also investigated online databases and explored the intrinsic value of what was collected. This in turn shaped our perception of John Seymour. After reading a transcript of his oral history that was recorded towards the end of his life, we were able to gain a more nuanced understanding of Seymour and the objects he collected. At the beginning of the semester, we all thought he was just a rich old man who simply traveled and liked to collect things. After reading the transcript we were able to glean that he was community driven, and had a great appreciation for arts and education. All this shows that a collection left behind after death has an impact on how a person is judged by strangers.