Class of 1879 H.S.


Alphabetical Alumni
Greenwood, Joshua

Greenwood, Joshua
Provo, Utah US

Joshua Greenwood

BY Academy High School Class of 1879. Joshua Greenwood. Normal diploma received April 4, 1879. Greenwood is the only graduate mentioned as a Class of 1879 graduate, although Closing was usually held in June. Source: Deseret Evening News, April 7, 1879. Faculty & Staff, Training School, 1879-1880.

Harris, Dennison Emer (1879)

Harris, Dennison Emer (1879)
Springville, Utah US

Dennison and Eunice Harris

BYA High School Class of 1879. Dennison Emer Harris. ~ ~ Dennison Emer Harris was born May 13, 1854 in Springville, Utah, to Dennison Lott Harris and Sarah Wilson. Dennison spent his childhood helping his father on the family farm in Springville, Utah, and later in the central Utah town of Monroe. In the fall of 1878 he began to attend school at Brigham Young Academy (B.Y.A) in Provo, Utah, where he met and befriended Eunice Stewart, his future wife. Eunice and Dennison both graduated in the BYA Class of 1879. The following year he taught school at Richfield, Utah, and continued teaching there until the fall of 1880. More. Dennison and Eunice are the parents of Franklin Stewart Harris, Sr., and Dennis Emer Harris, both BYA High School Class of 1904.

Smith, Sarah Maria

Smith, Sarah Maria

Sarah and Byron Colton

Class of 1879? Born January 1, 1856 in Provo, Utah. She attended the BY Academy high school under Dr. Karl G. Maeser. She became the second wife of Byron Oliver Colton. The first wife was Sarah Jane Clark, who died in Mona, Utah, on August 22, 1875, leaving a daughter 4 years of age. Sarah and Byron Oliver Colton had four children: Minnie Colton Wilson; Stella Colton Hardy (mother of 12); George Albert Colton, died at 15; and Byron Owen Colton [BYH Class of 1900].

Stewart, Eunice Polly

Stewart, Eunice Polly

Eunice and Dennison Harris

BYA Class of 1879. Eunice Polly Stewart. From 1876 to 1879, Eunice attended school at Brigham Young Academy in Provo, Utah. She graduated from the Normal Department in May 1879. At BYA she met and befriended Dennison Emer Harris, her future husband. More. In the fall of 1876, when I was sixteen, I went to Provo to attend school at the Brigham Young Academy. Most of my life had been spent on a farm, and I now remember how I trembled when I realized how unfitted I thought I was to attend a school like I imagined the Brigham Young Academy was. Now in my seventy-second year my heart swells with gratitude and my eyes are blurred with tears of thanksgiving when I think how blessed I was in having had the opportunity of attending that wonderful school where I was privileged to be under the influence of Karl G. Maeser, that great educator and character builder. He was a teacher as well as being president of the school, and I had the privilege of having him for the teacher of several classes each year. He labored unceasingly to keep the school thoroughly democratic. He strove to make simplicity, humility, and a common brotherhood and sisterhood the slogan of the school. He wanted all to be peers while in school. He used to say to the girls, “If any of you have jewelry, please leave it home.” His students almost deified him. In his child-like humility and devotion to his religion, to me he seemed really divine. Even the walls of the old B.Y.A. seemed sacred. I attended this school three years. In the fall of 1878, Dennison Emer Harris, a young man from Monroe, Sevier County, Utah, entered the school and took a seat just across the aisle from mine. We soon became acquainted and a warm friendship sprang up between us and we very often studied together. He would help me with knotty problems in arithmetic and I would help him in diagramming and analyzing difficult sentences in grammar. Friendship was all that was allowed between boys and girls when students at the B.Y.A. in Brother Maesar’s day. We enjoyed each other’s friendship until the end of the school year [1879], when I graduated from the Normal Department and he returned to his home in Monroe. During the school year, 1879 and 1880, he taught school in Richfield, Sevier County, and I taught in Benjamin. In September, 1880, I went to Provo to visit my dear friend and cousin, Melissa Stewart, where I again met D.E. Harris, who was in Provo attending court as a juryman. After a separation of more than a year we met soul to soul. Our time together was short as I had to return home the next day, and he had to hasten home to make preparations to go on a mission in two weeks. The sweetest story ever told can be said in a few words under some circumstances. D.E. Harris left for his mission where he labored in Michigan and Ohio in October, 1880, and returned July, 1882. During the school year of 1880 and 1881 I taught school in Benjamin and in 1881 and 1882 I taught in Payson until the first of April. I then had an opportunity to go to Monroe and teach a spring term. Monroe was the home of the Harris family, and as I desired to get acquainted with the family before becoming one of its members, I went. I traveled from Juab, the railroad terminus with Bishop Harris, my intended father-in-law. He was returning from Salt Lake City where he had been attending the general conference. I rode all the way in the seat by his side. He was a good conversationalist and a splendid story-teller, and I had a good opportunity of getting acquainted with him. I immediately liked him, as everyone did who came under his influence. I stayed in the Harris home for several days while I was locating a boarding place. I enjoyed my work in Monroe very much. I met all of the members of the Harris family and liked them all. They all seemed to welcome me as one of the family. The people were all very kind to me and the trip and experiences were very pleasurable, and I considered it one of profit too. One of the pleasures of this trip to Monroe was the privilege of visiting, in her home near Richfield, Estelle Dixon Fairbanks, who had married and moved there two years before. At the end of the school term, early in July, I returned home traveling in the conveyance Bishop Harris sent to Juab for his son, Denny, who was returning from a mission where he had been laboring in Ohio and Michigan for nearly two years. In Juab we met, after our long separation, where we had a short, but very joyous and happy visit. We made plans for our marriage. As he was anxious to return to school the coming school year, we planned to be married just before the opening of school. On August 24, 1882, we were married in the old Endowment House in Salt Lake City, he being twenty-eight years of age, and I, twenty-two. Autobiographical Sketch of Eunice Stewart Harris.