Faculty Papers/A. L. (Alfred Lyman) Musson Papers

Arrangement and Content

Restrictions

Subject Terms

Bibliography

Related Material

Administrative Information

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Collection Summary 

Biography

Alfred Lyman Musson was born on August 31, 1911 at Honolulu, Hawaii to Alfred and Mildred Musson.  In 1933, he received his bachelor's degree from Connecticut State College at Storrs.  In 1934, Alfred earned a master's degree and in 1951 a doctorate degree both from Iowa State University at Ames.  Alfred married Helen Saunders on November 28, 1935 at South Norwalk, Connecticut.  They had three children; Alfred L., Jr., Ester, and Merrill.  Helen Saunders Musson died in November 1987.  He married Hannah Sharp at Brookings on February 18, 1989.

Musson served in the 271^st Infantry, 69^th Infantry division of the United States Army from 1937 to 1945.  He was a veteran of World War II and retired from the service as a lieutenant colonel.  He was employed with Iowa State University for six years, and later at the Hope Farm School for Dependent Children for three years.  He joined the South Dakota State College faculty in October 1952 as professor and head of the Animal Science Department.  From 1960 until his retirement in 1973, he served in the office of the Dean of Agriculture and Biological Sciences under various titles, and retired as associate director of the South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station in June 1973.  After his retirement, Musson pursued genealogy.  He wrote a family history of his great-grandmother, which was published privately in 1986, and from 1980 until 1982, he published a family genealogy newsletter.  He was a member of the Brookings Area Genealogy Society, the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society and the Marblehead (Mass.) Historical Society.  He was also involved with the Mystic Seaport, Inc., the 69^th Infantry Division Association, the American Society of Animal Science, Gamma Sigma Delta, Sigma Xi, and St. Paul's Episcopal Church.  He was a former Rotarian and Scoutmaster at Ames, Iowa.

Arrangement and Content

The Alfred Lyman Musson Papers sub-group consists of materials from a trip made by Musson to Somalia, East Africa in 1954.  Included are scrapbooks, photographs, negatives, slides, notes, correspondence, some publications and articles about Somalia, maps, and trip preparation items.

The scrapbooks consist of pictures taken while in Somalia.  Included are Musson's translations of the Italian descriptions that are written on the back of most of the pictures.  The photographs, negatives and slides consist of more pictures of Somalia but do not include any description of each image. 

The notes consist of writings made by Musson while in Somalia.  The correspondence consists mainly of communications with the Foreign Operations Administration in preparation for Musson's trip.  The publications and articles include items about Somalia that Musson probably read in preparation for his trip.  The trip preparations include information about customs in Somalia, immunizations for travel abroad, and some paper work that includes an investigation form for security clearance that details some biographical information about Musson.  Also included are a few maps of Somalia that show some of the places that Musson visited.

Restrictions

Use of Materials

This collection is open to research without restriction.

Subject Terms

This collection is indexed under the following headings in the subject guide. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the subject guide using these headings.

• Agricultural assistance, American—Somalia.

• Animal and Range Sciences, Dept. of (SDSU)

• Faculty (SDSU)

• Musson, A. L. (Alfred Lyman), 1911-1990.

• Somalia.

Bibliography

Dinkel, Christian Alfred and A. L. Musson, Beef cattle breeding research in South Dakota, Brookings, S.D., Agricultural Experiment Station, South Dakota State College, 1956. 630.7 So87.17 no. 130.

Worzella, W.W., and A. L. Musson, Proposed program for agricultural technical assistance for Somalia, Rome, Italy: s.n., 1954. S471.S55 W6

Related Material

Faculty Papers/Collected Faculty Materials, South Dakota State University Archives, South Dakota State University, Brookings, S.D. UA 53.1

Faculty Papers/Faculty Publications, South Dakota State University Archives, South Dakota State University, Brookings, S.D. UA 53.2

Administrative Information

Preferred citation

Faculty Papers/A. L. (Alfred Lyman) Musson Papers, South Dakota State University Archives, South Dakota State University, Brookings, S. D.

Provenance

These files were found in the archives stacks in the fall of 1997. There is no indication of where they came from or how they came to be here.

Processing Information

The scrapbooks were dismantled for preservation purposes.

This collection was processed by Crystal J. Gamradt on 31 August 1998 with revisions on 10 February 1999 and 27 June 2002 [cjg].

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