Special Collections & Archives Hatch Room : Home

Lorenzo Boyd Hatch was born in Logan, Utah on January 9, 1897. The sixth of nine siblings, he was born to parents Hezekiah Eastman Hatch (1855-1928) and Georgia Vivian Thatcher (1865 – 1919). Lorenzo Boyd Hatch’s parents were prominent owners of the infamous Hatch Camp in Logan Canyon. In 1917, while working in Salt Lake City, he met Anne McQuarrie, the youngest daughter of six siblings who was born in St. George, Utah on May 11, 1897. Her parents were Hector Allen McQuarrie (1862 - 1926) and Ella Carr Gardner (1866 - 1943). Not much is known of her parents, however a newspaper document which was printed after her father's death, shows that her father was active in some mission work in Ireland, Scotland, and the United States.

Lorenzo and Anne married a year later after meeting on June 3, 1918 in Logan, Cache, Utah. Anne McQuarrie – Hatch later graduated from Utah State Agricultural College (Present day Utah State University) in 1918. That same year Lorenzo Boyd Hatch had registered for military service though records speculate that he was not drafted. He graduated from Utah State Agricultural College in 1919, and within the same year his mother, Georgia Vivian Thatcher died from an illness. After his mother’s death he was appointed by his father to take over management of the Hatch camp. The success of the camp allowed Lorenzo and his brother-in-law Floyd B. Odlum (married to Anne McQuarrie – Hatch’s sister, Hortense McQuarrie), to become self-made millionaires in the 1920s and 1930s. Floyd being a lawyer, he was sent to work at New York City Law Firm representing Utah Power and Light. He and a friend pooled their investments to buy utility stocks.

In 1924, Lorenzo and Anne Hatch moved to New York to join Floyd in the United Corporation, an investment firm. In 1928, United merged with Atlas Utilities and Investors Ltd. The Atlas Corporation, which specialized in capital formation and management, was reported to have $6,000,000 ($104,139,298.24 in 2023) in assets in 1929. The company was able to shrewdly weather the stock market crash and continue to grow through the 1930s and 1940s. With Floyd Odium as president and Boyd Hatch as vice-president, Atlas invested, managed or controlled numerous industries, including Greyhound Buslines, R.K.O. and Paramount motion picture studios, the Hilton hotel chain, the Bonwit Teller and Franklin Simons ladies' apparel stores, Madison Square Garden, and various mines, utility companies, and banks.

Though Lorenzo and Anne made a wealthy life for themselves in New York, they never forgot their roots. By train, they traveled from New York to Utah with their two daughters Georgia Betty Hatch (born 1922) and Ella Ann "Sydney" Hatch (born 1928). Lorenzo had up to three months of vacation time a year and spent most of it in Logan Canyon at the Hatch Camp where Anne’s mother Ella McQuarrie – Hatch (married Lorenzo’s widower father in 1924) would prepare the camp ahead of time by recruiting students at the Utah State Agricultural College to work at the camp for the summer.

Lorenzo and Anne Hatch were also very active in several Utah-based charitable organizations which included the Church of Latter-Day Saints and Logan Sunshine Terrence Foundation which Lorenzo Hatch helped establish. They are considered notable alumni due to their generous donations to Utah State Agricultural College and the University of Utah. With his success in investing, Hatch and his wife travelled Europe purchasing fine art, furniture, and rare books during the 1920s and 1930s. They contributed to collections at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, the University of Utah, and Utah State University.

In 1941, the Hatches gifted the then Utah State Agricultural College an example of a Renaissance masterpiece, Portrait of a Gentleman, from the workshop of Justus Sustermans, a court painter to the Medici family in Florence, Italy during the 1600s. Over the next few years, the Hatches continued to give, with donations of books and manuscripts that helped educate USU students on architecture and interior design. One of the most famous items to be donated was the De Viller’s Book of Hours, a 15th century French illuminated manuscript, and was donated in 1949, after being on display in 1940 for a semester. The objects had significant meaning to Anne McQuarrie – Hatch, so much so, that on April 6, 1944 she wrote to the USAC President Elmer George Peterson proposing to build a significant book collection at the college in honor of her recently deceased mother. President Peterson wrote back to her with enthusiasm and thus she and the library staff began the work of developing the book collection.

Later on, in 1952, Lorenzo Boyd and Anne Hatch presented another proposal to create a reading room that would house the Ella Gardener McQuarrie Hatch book collection and other rare materials held by the library. These collections had international importance, including those of William Randolph Hearst; Davanzati Palace, Florence Italy; and the Charles of London Collection. The proposed gift also included a 16^th century English refectory table, English oak linen-fold panels, a Ming Dynasty vase, 15^th century Italian faldistorium, a 17^th century Flemish tapestry among other fine antique objects. The USAC President Louis L. Madsen presented the Hatch proposal to the Board of Trustees on July 12, 1952 and the Board moved to accept the gifts on August 23^rd later that year. The funding for the building and installation of the Hatch room was later approved by the Board during their meeting on March 13^th -14^th 1953. On October 30, 1953, the USAC Library hosted a reception to officially open the Ella Gardener McQuarrie Hatch Memorial Library.

Lorenzo Boyd Hatch died on August 31, 1957, four years after the Ella Gardener McQuarrie Hatch Memorial Library was completed, he was 60 years old. Anne McQuarrie Hatch joined him in death on October 24, 1979 a little more than twenty years later, and six days before the 26^th Anniversary of the Hatch Memorial Library, she was 82 years old. Together they are both laid to rest at the Logan City Cemetery.

“This room will serve two purposes: (1) here will be preserved many of the best expressions of our cultural heritage, (2) here the student of today and tomorrow may come to work in the intimacy of artistic beauty. He may use books six hundred years, as well as great books of our own era. He may study first-hand the oil painting of an old Master. He may sit and dream at a table at which King Henry the VIII himself may well have sat. It will be a spiritual and cultural haven in our busy world.”

Zoe’Swanna McGee has two undergraduate degrees from Georgia Southern University, in History and Philosophy from her home state Georgia. Here at Utah State University, she is currently obtaining her Master’s in History in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Department. She is a Graduate Teaching Assistant and a student staff member of the Special Collections and Archives at the Merrill-Cazier Library, specializing in the preservation and presentation of information of the Ella Gardener McQuarrie-Hatch Memorial Library.