The Brewer family papers contain biographical information primarily on the three family members. Joseph Henry Brewer (1875-1943) was the son of Lucien Bonaparte and Anne (nee Escott) Brewer. Mary Augusta Hillyer (1873-1967) was the daughter of Henry Livingston Hillyer (1840-1886) and Francis nee Van Vechten (1846-1924). Joseph and August (as she preferred to be called) had two children, Hillyer (1895-1898) and Joseph Hillyer (1898-1990).

Joseph Brewer worked as a court stenographer, 1891-1905, but later expanded into other business ventures. He was an early investor in the Grand Rapids Sticky Flypaper Co., but made his fortune building and combining utility operations in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Indiana. He sold these interests in 1924 at a considerable profit and purchased controlling interests in several of the Grand Rapids banks, the Pantlind Hotel and Morton House Hotel, as well as establishing a 1,000 acre dairy and poultry farm north of the city. The economic ill effects of the Depression wiped out most of Brewer's financial fortune, but he begin rebuilding that empire before his death. He was a founding member of the Michigan National Bank Corp. Brewer died of heart problems, as had his older brother.

Augusta Hillyer married Joseph Brewer on 11 October 1894. She was the daughter of Henry Livingston Hillyer a well-known nineteenth century artist of the "Washington (D.C.) Landscape School" and Frances nee Van Vechten, an early woman physician with a degree from Howard University. The 1880 census lists Henry and Frances living in Washington, with Henry working as a clerk for the government. Frances and Henry moved to Grand Rapids around 1883, as documented by their listings in the city directory. Henry dies three years later in 1886. The move to Grand Rapids may have been prompted by the presence of Frances' sister living in Grand Rapids, Mrs. Caroline S. Torrey (Arthur C.) Frances died Oct. 27, 1924 in Grand Rapids.

Augusta Brewer attended Michigan State University (then known as the Michigan Agricultural College), but did not graduate. She bore two children, Hillyer, a boy who died as the result of burns while she was carrying her second son, Joseph Hillyer Brewer. During her life Augusta was active in various garden clubs and during 1942-1943 was elected national president of the Council of State Garden Clubs.

Joseph Hillyer Brewer attended high school in Grand Rapids, and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1920. Following Dartmouth he attended Magdalen College, Oxford University, England from 1921-1922. He completed the requirements for his M.A. degree from Magdalen in 1933. From 1922-1924 he worked on the staff of The Spectator, a London literary magazine. In 1925, having returned to the United States, he worked for Payson & Clarke publishers and in 1928 took over the assets of this firm and formed Brewer & Putnam publishers, of which he was president. This firm was sold to Harcourt, Brace & Co. during the Great Depression. From 1934 to 1943 (1944) Brewer was president of Olivet College, of which his father was a trustee. After resigning from Olivet, Brewer received a Library Science degree from Columbia University and worked as the associate director of the Queens College Library. Brewer married twice; first to Jacqueline Denise Campau of Grand Rapids in 1949 (she died in 1954); and later to Helen Wilson a professor at Queens College. Joseph died Feb. 25, 1990 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Other family of note, though with little collection content, are Augusta Brewer's parents. Her mother, Dr. Francis S. Hillyer, was a physician, one of the first woman documented in this profession in Grand Rapids, ca. 1883, with the first believed to be Frances Rutherford ca. 1868. Francis is first documented in the city directories in 1883/1884, which also lists her artist husband Henry. Henry Livingston Hillyer was a landscape painter, of the Washington (DC) Landscape school. He died shortly after moving to Grand Rapids, in 1886.