A college education does not make one a true scholar, he warned. As the graduates left Ann Arbor for careers throughout the state and beyond, and as the Whiting family mourned their loss, Professor George Williams — the ever-popular Punky — remained on campus.
Having greeted the first students in , he stayed on the faculty until his death 40 years later, at the age of He was beloved to the point that students donated money to support him in his declining years. Campbell in eulogizing Williams. George Palmer Williams , by James V. George Duffield. Skip to content. Search for: Search. Facebook Twitter. It served as both dormitory and classroom facility.
Image: Bentley Historical Library. Share Tweet Print. Chapter 1 Introduction Their names are nowhere on the University of Michigan campus. But please come to know them: Lyman Norris. George Parmelee. Judson Collins. William Wesson. Merchant Goodrich. George Pray. They did what no other young person had ventured to do in Ann Arbor. They enrolled. Image: Detroit Free Press. By the summer of , the state university was taking shape, and outsiders were taking notice. A third figure who comes actively into the picture was the Reverend John Monteith, a young Presbyterian clergyman who had been ordained at Princeton in after his first visit to the Territory.
It is evident that a strong friendship sprang up between him and Father Richard, for in Monteith's journal for October 28, , we read, "visit Priest Richard, who is out of health.
I think he loves to have me visit him" Early Records, p. The liberal spirit of these two friends is evidenced by a tradition that it was in Richard's Catholic church of St. Anne's that Monteith held the first Protestant service in Michigan. Other men of outstanding personality who had a part in the plans for the University were Lewis Cass, Governor of the Territory, afterwards candidate for the presidency of the United States, and William Woodbridge, Secretary of the Territory, who gave Richard's and Monteith's efforts effective political backing.
The result of the efforts of these men was the curiously named Catholepistemiad of Michigania, chartered by the territorial government, the governor and the judges of the Territory, on August 26, In this overwhelming title can be discerned Judge Woodward's pedantic turn of mind. He followed his system of universal knowledge as set forth in his book in the plan for a system of instruction from primary levels to a university, which was to be divided into thirteen didaxiim, to be taught by "didactors" of such teaching subjects as anthropoglossica, or literature, mathematica, or mathematics, physiosophica, or natural sciences, astronomia, or astronomy, chymia, or chemistry, iatrica, or medical sciences, polemitactica, or military sciences, and ennoeica, or intellectual sciences.
The thirteenth subject was catholepistemia, or universal science, and the instructor in this subject was to be president of the University.
This is the extraordinary and bizarre side of a plan which was, as a matter of fact, a sound program for a state system of education that had, as might be expected, many elements in common with Jefferson's plan for the University of Virginia. The president and didactors were to form a governing board in control of all educational agencies of the state and empowered to charter schools and colleges.
Financial support was to come from the Territory and from student fees see Part I: Regents. On September 12, the trustees passed a series of enactments setting up primary schools in Detroit, Monroe, and Michilimackinac, and a classical academy in Detroit, including a provision for the erection of a building. Less than a month later, on October 3, a further act was passed "to establish the First College of Michigania," evidently as part of the general program for education embodied in the University or Catholepistemiad.
It is significant to note that in all these early measures the institution was uniformly known as the "University of Michigania" and that only once, in a report of the meeting of the Board of Trustees and Visitors of the Classical Academy and Primary Schools, held on June 11, , was the term "Catholepistemiad" used officially.
It is quite evident that Judge Woodward's terminology was far from popular. The question of financing the construction of the University building was a serious one. The first report of Monteith, as president, in November, , indicates that the cost of the building rather exceeded the amount of the first and second years' subscriptions and the donations for the fire sufferers.
It stood on the west side of Bates Street near Congress and measured twenty-four feet by fifty feet. The first floor was used for the elementary school, while the second floor was reserved for the classical academy.
Though the progress of construction was slow, Monteith's report of November 19, , indicates that the classical academy had been in operation for about nine months and the primary school three months. Apparently neither of the "didactors" ever gave courses of collegiate grade. The primary, or Lancastrian, school had been placed under the charge of Lemuel Shattuck, a native of Massachusetts, who was engaged by the Reverend John Monteith and seems to have arrived in Detroit early in June, Shattuck, who also acted as the first secretary of the Board of Trustees appointed in , left Detroit at the end of that year.
He won some prominence in his later years as the author of laws in Massachusetts relating to school organization and the recording of vital statistics, and as chairman of the commission to make a sanitary survey of the state.
His successors in charge of the school were John Farmer until January, , later distinguished as a map maker and local historian, Ebenezer Shephard, and a Mr. Cook from Albany, who died in After that time, both schools became, practically, the private venture of the teachers in charge, and little is said about their management in the surviving records.
Hugh M. Dickie, a graduate of Jefferson College, was the first teacher of the classical academy, and began his work on February 2, , in a house at the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Griswold Street, pending the completion of the University building.
He died on February 16, , and was probably succeeded by John J. Deming, although the matter is not entirely clear. It is, however, recorded that the trustees and visitors of the academy elected Ebenezer Clapp as teacher on February 17, In that year the new Board of Trustees of the University of Michigan superseded the "University of Michigania" and dispensed with the Board of Trustees and Visitors of the Classical Academy and Primary Schools, making themselves responsible for the conduct of the school.
There was dissension over the proposed reappointment of Mr. Clapp in , and the Reverend Alonson W. Welton became his successor He in turn was succeeded by Ashbel S. Wells and Charles C. Sears On October 30, , the trustees voted to discontinue financial aid to the academy, but invited the teacher to continue at his own risk.
There are records of at least sporadic use of the building for school purposes after this time and prior to the first appointment of Regents in In the city of Detroit asked for the use of the rooms for the establishment of common schools, and in May, , such a request was granted.
In the academy building was rented to the masters of the two schools in it, John N. Bellows and D. The Reverend Mr. Elens took a lease of the upper room in for a classical school Early Records, pp. The original act had provided for an increase of 15 per cent in the territorial taxes, as well as lotteries, for the support of the program. There is no evidence, however, of any resort to these methods of support, nor were plans set up for the utilization of the government lands, which, in so many states, were the impelling factor in the establishment of educational institutions, although one section had been set aside for an institution of higher education in One contribution to the University had an important as well as a romantic significance.
This was a gift from the various tribes of Indians — Wyandot, Potawatomi, Shawnee, and Chippewa — who in met Lewis Cass and General Duncan McArthur beside the rapids of the Maumee south of the present site of Toledo to negotiate a treaty for the settling of land titles. In this treaty was included a specific grant by the Indians of six sections of land to be divided equally between Father Richard's parish of St.
Anne and the "college at Detroit. These lands were eventually allocated and sold for the benefit of the University, but the specific identity of the gift has been lost. The only definite evidences today of this interest in a white man's education on the part of the Indian peoples of Michigan are five scholarships established by the Regents in for American Indian students. After four years of experiment Judge Woodward's original plan proved to have certain defects.
These were remedied through a new charter from the territorial legislative council, which changed the official name to "the University of Michigan," and provided for a board of twenty-one trustees to hold office at the pleasure of the legislature, instead of the earlier plan for government by the faculty. This board retained the power to establish "such colleges, academies and schools … as they might deem proper" and were also empowered to grant degrees and to elect a president.
Though its educational functions became increasingly attenuated, this body represented the corporate organization of the University of Michigan until the University in Ann Arbor was established in Without doubt the Board of Trustees appointed in included the most distinguished citizens of the Territory. Monteith, of Detroit; John R.
Hunt, Detroit's second mayor; John L. Desnoyers, Detroit silversmith and holder of numerous public offices; Austin E. Most people called the new school the College of Detroit. A few months later, in February , an instructor named H. Dickie was hired to organize the first classes. Not the kind of university that U-M is today, or anything close. It was more like a high school before there were high schools — an academy for students to get more training before they went on to one of the few actual American colleges of the day, such as Harvard, Princeton or Yale.
The students learned Latin, Greek and some science. There was also an elementary-type school for younger students. It was paid for largely with public funds — mostly the proceeds from selling land given for the purpose by the federal government and three Native American tribes: the Ojibwe, Odawa and Bodewadimi. And its sole purpose was to serve the public good. Only if a single building can be termed a campus. Ford School of Public Policy. Image: Vanderbilt University. Image: Weather Underground.
Image: U-M Photo Services. Michigan Photography. Image: University of California, Berkeley. Image: School of Public Health. Image: U-M Athletics. Image: U-M Health System. Image: National Science Foundation. Image: University of Michigan Health System. Image: Miss Universe Organization. Image: U-M News Service. Image: Michigan Athletics.
0コメント