Project Overview

Whether you want to know the name of the Lawrenceville School students who survived the Titanic, the lyrics to “Fight on True Sons of Lawrence,” or your great-grandfather’s yearbook quote, the Lawrenceville School Archives is the place to find the answers. And now, thanks to a $6 million gift from John J. Stephan, Lawrenceville School Class of 1959, and his wife, Barbara, that search is about to get a lot easier.
The Archives is receiving a state-of-the-art makeover, which will better preserve the literally millions of bits of school history, including sports memorabilia, publications, artworks, blueprints, recordings, documents, and photographs related to the institution. The Archives, which will remain housed on the lower level of the School’s Bunn Library, will be expanded and many of the documents and photographs will be catalogued electronically for the first time. The Stephan donation also provides funding for student and faculty research projects, which will bring historical Lawrenceville information back to the Archives.
Significantly, the gift has endowed the position of School Archivist, currently held by Jacqueline Haun, and will fund an archives assistant as well as a temporary cataloguer and exhibits specialist. Haun expects the School will be able to archive twice as many materials in the new space, critical since requests for information have more than tripled over the past decade. Queries from faculty and staff are the most common, but an increasing number of Lawrenceville classes are using the Archives for projects, as are outside researchers, seeking genealogical information or records relating to local history. For that reason, expanded research and classroom space are part of the new design, which will ease student access to and use of materials.
“We are thrilled with this generous gift and recognize that it gives us a unique opportunity among secondary schools,” said Haun. “This level of support for archives is typically reserved for colleges and universities, so we take very seriously the responsibility to create a strong archives program that will underscore the value Lawrenceville places not only on its own history but on teaching students how to conduct research with primary documents.”
John Stephan’s interest in the Archives, both for their historical value and as a teaching tool, is not surprising given his own history. He is professor of history emeritus at the University of Hawaii, where he taught from 1970 to 2001, with expertise in Russian and Japanese modern history. An authority on Russian-Japanese relations, he has served as a visiting scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, visiting professor at Stanford University, senior associate fellow of St. Antony’s College at Oxford University, and Japan Foundation Fellow in the Slavic Research Center at the University of Hokkaido, among other academic honors.
“At the ripe age of nine,” Stephan recalled, “perched on the balcony of Princeton’s McCarter Theater, I inhaled the infectious exuberance of the 1950 Lawrenceville Spring Show, imbibing a tradition that leavened reverence with levity. This happy blend owes much to Allan Heely, head master from 1934 to 1959. His farewell to our class, written with a lightness of touch that belied his failing health, ended with a refrain from an old school song: ‘forget us not.’ The gift to the School Archives heeds his wish while honoring his memory.”
The School Archivist noted that she is always on the lookout for Lawrenceville-related materials, “Anything documenting the history of women at Lawrenceville is especially welcomed,” said Haun. “Scrapbooks, photographs, diaries . . . it’s an area we really need to fill in.”