Person

Burnett, Frank

1852-1930

Frank Burnett was born in Scotland in 1852 and was apprenticed to the Merchant Sailing Service at a young age. In 1870, he emigrated to Canada and made a fortune in grain on the Prairies and real estate in Vancouver. Frank Burnett retired to South Seas, where he wrote travel books and collected ethnological specimens. In 1927, Burnett presented his 1,200 item collection to UBC, housed in the Library. The collection formed the core around which the Museum of Anthropology was established twenty years later. UBC's first anthropologist, Harry Hawthorn, and his wife, Audrey, the first curator of the Museum, were given responsibility for the care, use and expansion of Burnett's assemblage.

Collector of ethnological artifacts.

UBC Library News, 1969 [accessed, July 2021].