History Department

Welcome to the International Society Daughters of Utah Pioneers History Department. Our objective is to "perpetuate the names and achievements of the men, women and children who were the pioneers...by preserving old landmarks, marking historical places, collecting artifacts and histories, establishing a library of historical matter and securing manuscripts, photographs, maps and all such data as shall aid in perfecting a record of pioneers."

A pioneer is an ancestor who came to the Utah Territory/State of Deseret; died crossing the plains; or was born in the Utah Territory/State of Deseret before May 10, 1869, the coming of the railroad. If your ancestor does not fit into this criteria, we will not have a history.

The International DUP History Department collects and preserves the histories of these special ancestors. We presently have over 100,000 pioneer histories on file. Copies of these histories are available to direct descendents and/or DUP paid up members. Costs are $0.25 per page. Minimum charge of $1.00.

You may check the History Index online. Click on "Go to History Card Index" below to search our index. If you find a direct ancestor or ancestors, we encourage you to come in to the History Department at the Pioneer Memorial Museum--also known as the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum--and request to read them. Some files contain several histories, others contain an obituary only. If coming to the museum is difficult, you may download a request form and follow instructions. If you want to request histories, click on the "Get Request Form" link. FILL OUT THE FORM COMPLETELY. We have to have all names of women (maiden name and all married names). We file all women by a married name. We do not accept requests by phone, fax, or email. Please limit your requests to no more than 9 in a thirty day period.

The History Department is open Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.  Please plan enough time that we can help you properly. We suggest you come in before 3 p.m. We invite you to come and see what we have on file in our history department. Also plan enough time to check our library, our picture files, our resource files, and our locality files. A volunteer historian will be happy to help you research any of these files.

We strongly recommend that you come to the museum at 300 North Main, Salt Lake City, Utah, to select what you want copied and browse through all of our resources.

The History Department is not open Saturdays.

Go to History Card Index

Get Request Form  *

Submit A History

If you would like to submit a history of an ancestor, please use a DUP Title Page (click here to download Title Page *). We encourage writing of histories of those pioneers we do not have in our files. We notice there are many native pioneers -- those born in Utah before May 10, 1869 -- for whom we do not have histories on file.