Hugh Reagan and his wife, Mary Belle Agee, were residents of Washington County; Hugh attended Cane Hill College. He began the family's connection with the University of Arkansas in 1871 when he voted to have Arkansas' proposed new land grant university located in Washington County. He was appointed secretary to the then Arkansas Industrial University's Board of Trustees, and in this capacity he became the "auditor" (registrar) in charge of matriculation requirements and procedures. Hugh and Mary Belle's only child, Lytton, was enrolled in 1900 in the University's Preparatory Department. He earned his bachelor's degree in engineering at the University eight years later. His activities during those years are documented in the Z. Lytton Reagan Papers, originally a collection in itself, now constituting Series 1 of this collection.

In 1908 Lytton married Agnes Dean Shelton (known as Dean), the daughter of Hugh K. Shelton and Susan Walker, and the great-granddaughter of Peter van Winkle, whose saw-mill supplied the basic lumber for Old Main. The Shelton-Tucker American Legion Post #27 was named for Dean's brother, Lynn, who was killed in World War 1.

In 1917 Dean and Lytton moved to Rogers, where Lytton was president and manager of the Rogers Wholesale Grocery Company. He served on the Rogers School Board and from 1915 until 1921 he was a member of the University Board of Trustees.

Each of the Reagan sisters has had an outstanding career in education. All three obtained undergratuate degrees from the University of Arkansas. Agnes Lytton (B.A. 1935) received a master's degree in history and a bachelor's in library science from Emory University. She subsequently received both a master's and a doctorate in library science from the University of Illinois. She served on the library staff at Agnes Scott and Wellesley colleges. From 1947 to 1967 she taught courses in reference and documents at Emory's Division of Librarianship, and from 1969 until 1975 she served as the first accreditation officer for the American Library Association in Chicago. From 1975 until her retirement in 1984, she taught in the areas of reference and government publications at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1986, she was given the American Library Association's Beta Phi Mu award for "distinguished service to education for librarianship."

Mary Sue (B.A. 1942) earned a master's degree in history from the University of Missouri. Her American history teaching career at Rogers High School began in 1943 and continued until her retirement in 1990.

Betty Lynn (B.A. 1945) earned her master's degree in history from Emory. She taught world history and American government at Rogers High School from 1945 until 1993, when she retired. In 1962 she studied in France on a Fulbright Scholarship.

Both Mary Sue and Betty Lynn have been honored as Teacher of the Year in Rogers, both were named by the Rogers Chamber of Commerce to the Educator's Hall of Fame, and both received the Benton County Bar Association's Liberty Bell Award for outstanding teaching of American history and government. The Mary Sue Reagan and Betty Lynn Reagan Elementary School was dedicated in Rogers in 1989.