The records of the University of Michigan Alumnae Club of Ann Arbor Sara Browne Smith Group include minutes, reports, scrapbooks, correspondence, and other materials relating to group activities.
1977 and 1981 Accessions. The 1977 accession includes material from 1930 to 1960, while the 1981 accession documents the period 1947-1981. The contents of these accessions are not further described in this Scope and Content Note.
1996 Accession. The records of this accession of the Sara Browne Smith Group are divided into seven series: historical information; officers' files; committees' files; miscellaneous administrative files; publicity files; events file; and photographs.
In 1931, Mrs. Sara Browne Smith (nee Sara Spencer Browne), an alumna of the University of Michigan and former chairman of the Alumnae Council, was instrumental in the formation of the first University of Michigan alumnae club in Ann Arbor. Mrs. Alva Gordon Sink was asked to organize the group, and an initial organizational meeting was held on November 5, 1931. The first membership reception and tea was held on December 5, 1931; 173 attended, and 136 paid dues of one dollar each. The founding president was Alva Gordon Sink. In March 1932, a Scholarship Committee was established "to aid deserving Ann Arbor girls who wished to attend the University of Michigan." The funding of scholarships would become a primary focus for the Smith group over the succeeding decades, as would the financial support that they gave to the Center for the Continuing Education of Women, the Henderson House, and the national Alumnae Council.
In 1938, by which time the membership had reached 552, the group was named the Ann Arbor Michigan Alumnae Club. Its next major project, following the establishment of the Scholarship Committee, was the financing of "a cooperative dormitory for women, modeled somewhat on the lines of the present Alumnae House, to be known as Henderson House, a memorial to Mrs. W.D. Henderson" (Michigan Alumnus, Oct. 1937). Henderson House was completed in September 1945. The Ann Arbor Michigan Alumnae Club had donated $2000 to the effort from 1937 to 1940, and continued to give financial support through financial support through scholarships for room and board.
In 1946, an offshoot of the Ann Arbor Michigan Alumnae Club, consisting of younger members, was organized as the Lucile B. Conger Group. In 1953, part of the Conger Group was reorganized as the Margaret Lawler Waterman Group. These groups (with the Ann Arbor Michigan Alumnae Club) worked both together and separately, but there was some confusion about the names, and a desire to make the groups equal under the umbrella name of the University of Michigan Alumnae Club of Ann Arbor. By 1954, therefore, the Ann Arbor Michigan Alumnae Club was renamed the Sara Browne Smith Group. In 1960, another group was organized, named for Alva Gordon Sink; these four groups (Smith, Conger, Waterman, and Sink) formed part of the University of Michigan Alumnae Club of Ann Arbor.
By the 1990s, the membership of the group had decreased substantially (with 54 members in 1994). In a letter to the Alumnae Council, the governing board of the Sara Browne Smith Group wrote: "With the decline in membership and the aging of the remaining members it has become increasingly difficult to recruit leadership....Our usual attendance is 15 including the board. In addition, we are unable to fulfill our mission: providing new monies for scholarships." The group requested, and was granted (April 22, 1995), status as an "Emerita Club"; the group would no longer have meetings or pay dues, but it retained a representative on the Alumnae Council. The remaining funds of the group were incorporated into the Sara Browne Smith Scholarship fund, managed by the Alumni Association, and a "Celebration" of the group's years of service and new Emerita status was held on May 21, 1995.
A more detailed history, up to 1981, was published as Sara Browne Smith and Friends, available in the first series of this record group; this is the source for most of the above information.
