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ARTES
AUVERITAS!
IVE
SCIENTIA
183
THE
MICHIGAN BOOK
. OF
MICH
ARTES
AN
UM
VER
SCIENTIAL
1837
ANN ARBOR
1898
Copyright 1898 BY EDWIN H. HUMPHREY
THE INLAND PRESS ANN ARBOR
CONTENTS
I Our Alma Mater 5
II
Graduates and Former Students
I6
III The Departments 35
IV
The Classes .
40
V Town and Gown 78
VI Religious Societies 87
VII Literary Societies . 93
VIII Student Publications 103
IX Student Music 130
X Sports and Games 142
XI Academic Fraternities 177
XII Professional-School Fraternities 282
XIII
Class Societies
299
XIV
Collegiate Sisterhoods
306
Index of Subjects .
319
Index of Illustrations
322
OF
IG
UNI
IIGAN.
*
MINERVA MONSTRAT ITER. QUAQUE OSTEN- DIT SE DEXTRA SEQUAMUR
A
FORMER SEAL OF THE UNIVERSITY.
CHAPTER I OUR ALMA MATER
By an act of Congress passed in 1804 one township of land in the prospective Territory of Michigan was set apart for the sup- port of a seminary of learning. Twenty-two years later Congress enlarged the grant to two townships. In the year 1817 the Gover- nor and Judges of the Territory enacted a marvellous bill drawn by Augustus P. Woodward, Presiding Judge, whereby was established the "Catholepistemiad or University of Michigania". This statute decreed that the University should be composed of thirteen pro- fessorships, each called a didaxia, the didactors or professors to be appointed by the Governor. Two "didactors" at salaries of $12.50 each were appointed, and a primary school and a classical academy were established in Detroit; but in 1821 the act of 1817 was repealed, and a new act was passed for the establishment at Detroit of the University of Michigan, to be managed by twenty- one trustees. This board was legislated out of office by the Mich- igan statute of March 18, 1837, entitled "An act to provide for the organization and government of the University of Michigan", and passed only two months after the admission of the State into the Union by Congress. To the Rev. John D. Pierce, a graduate of Brown University and of Princeton Theological Seminary, who in the summer of 1836 had been appointed Superintendent of Public Instruction, is due the framing of this law under which the final organization of our Alma Mater was effected. As closely as possible the German idea of an university was followed, instead of imitating Yale and Harvard, themselves copies of English institu- tions. Michigan's University was to crown the educational system of the commonwealth, and to "provide the inhabitants of the State with the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of literature, science, and the arts". The business affairs of the University were to be managed by a Board of Regents appointed by the Governor of the State and approved by the Senate. Two days after the passage of the organizing act the legislature adopted another statute locating the University at Ann Arbor, "upon such site or lot of ground as shall be selected by the Regents of the Uni-
2
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THE MICHIGAN BOOK
versity and conveyed to them by the proprietors . . . free from cost . . . which site or lot of ground shall not be less than forty acres ". One day later the Regents appointed by Governor Mason under the new law were approved by the Senate. The Board held its first meeting in Ann Arbor, June 5, 1837. In 1839 Governor Mason saved the University from destruction by vetoing a bill which had passed both houses of the legislature for the sale of the endowment lands at a price far below their value.
From 1837 to 1841 branches or preparatory schools were established in different localities throughout the State, and five buildings, -four dwellings and what is now the north wing of University Hall- were erected at Ann Arbor for the use of the collegiate department, which was finally opened in Septem- ber, 1841. George P. Wil- liams, Vermont'25, and the Rev. Joseph Whiting, Yale '23, constituted the active Faculty when collegiate in- THE CAMPUS-NORTHWEST ENTRANCE. struction began. The num- ber of students increased from six, in September, 1841, to eighty- nine in 1847-48.
In 1848 the assistance of the University was withdrawn from the branches. This had the effect of depriving the institution of most of its preparatory schools, and in consequence the attendance diminished. Still more effective in checking growth was the secret- society struggle, which ultimately led to the entire reorganization of the University, and to constitutional changes whereby the Board of Regents became an elective body, charged by the fundamental law with "the general supervision of the University, and the direc- tion of all expenditures from the University interest fund". In October, 1850, the Department of Medicine and Surgery was formally opened.
In August, 1852, Henry P. Tappan, Union '25, was by the new Board of Regents elected President of the University. It has been customary to attribute to this illustrious man whatever emi- nence the University attained in its earlier career, and it has been said somewhat extravagantly "His administration begins the his-
7
OUR ALMA MATER
tory of the University as an educational power in Michigan and in the Northwest". The truth is that during its first decade, not- withstanding the disastrous society-war, our Alma Mater flourished as no other Western institution had ever flourished, and as no Eastern institution had flourished in the period of infancy. Mich- igan's first ten classes, all of which had been matriculated and eight of which had been graduated before Dr. Tappan's advent, gave a roll of 141 alumni; the first twenty classes of Yale and the first twenty of Harvard graduated only 102 and 136 respectively. The original lines of the University were laid upon the Prussian plan, to which Chancellor Tappan adhered; and the institution prior to 1852 had become such an "intellectual power" that it drew to its doors the representatives of the best families in Mich- igan, who thus were prevented from going East for their education. Whoever cares to contrast the first ten years of Michigan with the first ten of any other state university will find abundant evidence not only that our' University was on the whole ably managed from the outset, but that it was successful beyond all precedent. Nor should it be forgotten that the alumni graduated before Dr. Tappan's time are not less renowned than those whom he trained.
Nevertheless the University owes to its first President an incalculable debt. He gathered around himself a Faculty equal to any in the country-such men as Boise, Frieze, Brünnow, White, and Watson; he introduced the scientific course; he opened the laboratory and the law department; he procured the erection and equipment of the astronomical observatory; and he imparted to the students and to the people of the State true ideas of what a University should be.
That the arbitrary and impolitic removal of President Tappan by the Regents did not wreck the University was due to the tact and energy of his successor, Erastus Otis Haven, who from 1863 to 1869 held the presidential office. During Dr. Haven's time a new course, the Latin and scientific, was organized; a course in pharmacy was arranged; additions were made to the laboratory, the observatory, and the medical building; the library was enlarged and rendered serviceable; the number of students so increased as to exceed the enrolment of any other institution of learning in the country; and, more than all else, an annual appro- priation was obtained from the legislature, thus controverting these words of The Nation "The people will never consent to a
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THE MICHIGAN BOOK
general tax for the purpose of instructing a small body of men in Yale or Harvard or the University of Michigan". It was in 1867, when the University was only twenty-six years old, that George William Curtis, the Chairman of the Committee on education in the Constitutional Convention of New York, said of Yale, Har- vard and the University of Michigan: "They are the three great institutions of learning in this country ".
Upon the resignation of Dr. Haven in 1869, Professor Henry S. Frieze became Acting-President. In his brief but exceedingly important administration of two years the graduates of approved high schools were admitted upon presentation of diplomas, thus unifying the educational system of the State. The annual roll of academic graduates became very long for those times, and far sur- passed the class lists of the struggling colleges of Michigan and the surrounding states. In January, 1869, women were permitted to enter the University.
At Commencement in 1871 James Burrill Angell, L. L. D., who had resigned the control of the University of Vermont, and whose student life at Brown had ended twenty-two years before with his delivering the valedictory for his class, was inducted into the presidency. Among the results of Dr. Angell's long adminis- tration, which covers nearly half of the active existence of the University, have been the occupying of our campus with com- modious buildings, the erection and equipment of a splendid gymnasium, the acquiring of a field for athletic exercises, the broadening and strengthening of the curriculum, the doubling of the time required for graduation in law and medicine, the development of graduate courses, an extraordinary increase in the number of students and graduates, and the obtaining from the state of a fixed and fairly liberal annual income. All this has been accomplished in spite of great obstacles, and notwithstanding untoward episodes against which no foresight could guard.
Twice the active service of Dr. Angell has been interrupted by his absence from Ann Arbor owing to public duties as Envoy of the United States, first to the court of Peking from 1880 to 1882, and second to the Ottoman Porte, from 1897 to 1898. During the earlier of these absences Professor Frieze again became Acting-President; and at the present writing Harry B. Hutchins, '71, formerly Dean of the Law Department, has charge of affairs, he being the first of the graduates of the University to act as its chief executive.
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OUR ALMA MATER
The square tract of forty acres now called the campus was given to the Regents in 1837 by the Ann Arbor Land Company a thrifty association which had persuaded the legislature to over- rule Detroit and other cities in favor of Ann Arbor as the site of the new University. Notwithstanding the advice of President Tappan, who was in favor of buying the land clear through to the river, the campus itself never has been enlarged, the tracts pur- chased for the observatory, the hospitals, and the athletic field being separated from it by considerable distances.
Elaborate plans for beautifying the college grounds were adopted more than fifty years ago; but these were soon abandoned, and the forest growths of which the campus had been deprived before it passed to the Regents were replaced without any set design. There was planting of trees in 1845, 1847, and 1854, and much more from 1858 to 1860. " Tappan Oak" which stands east of the south wing has survived most of the maples placed around it, and notwithstanding the terrible versification to which it has been subjected it bids fair to live to a great age. Among the memorials on the campus are the class stone of '58 at the foot of the Tappan Oak, the CHANCELLOR TAPPAN. huge boulder left by '62, "calico rock" the offering of '69, the statue of Benjamin Franklin contributed by '70, and the broken column which commemorates the virtues of Professors Whiting, Houghton, Fox, and Denton.
In the autumn of 1870 a new fence was placed around the campus. This was so often injured by "rushes " and otherwise that in 1889-90 the remains of it were removed, and the grounds were thrown open. Old pictures of the University show a walk in front of the campus, but no such thing existed before 1890. In that year artificial stone was laid all the way along State street, and in the year following the other sides of the campus received like attention. As these sidewalks are not in the street proper, but occupy University ground, they are not within the city ordin- ance concerning bicycles, and one who takes to them jeopards his life. As for the old tar walks in the campus they have been replaced gradually by cement flagging, and the grounds themselves, formerly devoted to the Secretary's cow and to the raising of an annual crop of hay, have been levelled, sodded, and otherwise cared for.
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THE MICHIGAN BOOK
In 1839 a magnificent plan for the erection of buildings was adopted by the Regents. This would have involved the spending of half a million of dollars, nearly as much as has been realized from the sales of the endowment lands; and it failed to receive the approval, then necessary, of the Superintendent of Public Instruc- tion. Since then the principle that the first requisite of an univer- sity is great teachers rather than magnificent buildings has been recognized. Michigan has flourished because its funds have been put less into brick and stone and more into professorships.
Four two-story houses of stuccoed brick, designed as resi- dences for professors, and costing about eight thousand dollars, were erected in 1839-40, two on the north side and two on the south side of the campus. These, the first buildings of the Uni- versity, still remain. One is the President's House, which was greatly enlarged and improved five years ago at an expenditure of twelve thousand dollars. Another of these houses, the one east of Dr. Angell's residence, was occupied by Professor Frieze until 1877, when it was given to the dental school. A wing was added in 1879, and in 1891-92 the building was enlarged for the classes in engineering. Of the two dwellings on the north side of the cam- pus the one towards the east was given in 1869 to the medical de- partment for hospital purposes. It was enlarged in 1875 by a frame pavilion, and in 1879 by an ampitheatre for surgical oper- ations. Similar additions were made in 1879 to the northwest dwelling, which since 1875 has been used by the homœopathic col- lege. The dental school was a joint tenant of the same building from 1875 to 1877; then it occupied the southeast dwelling; and since 1891 it has held the house formerly used by the " regular " medical hospital.
What is now the north wing of University Hall was finished in 1841, and south college, the counterpart of it, was completed eight years later. Both are of brick, stuccoed. When built they were thought to be very handsome, and certainly they were equal if not superior to the generality of collegiate edifices of that day. At first these buildings were used in part as dormitories for the academic students. Each set of apartments consisted of a study, two sleeping chambers, and a room which was both a lavatory and a place of storage for luggage and wood. To each suite were assigned three and sometimes four students. Upper- classmen had the first choice of suites and generally took the high- est floor. We are told that the furniture usually found in the
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OUR ALMA MATER
rooms was a table or two, a lounge, a few chairs, a supply of hard- oil lamps or candlesticks, beds, occasionally a carpet, and now and then a clock. In 1856-57 the dormitories were abolished, the space they occupied being needed for other purposes.
The western part or front of the medical building, begun in 1848, was finished in the summer of 1850. It cost about nine thousand dollars, and in 1864 more than twice that sum was spent in enlarging it to its present dimensions.
In 1853-54 the astronomical observatory was built upon ground situated northeast of the campus. Citizens of Detroit con- tributed most of the money which went into this building. An addition to the observatory was made in 1865. The chemical lab- oratory, or rather the nucleus of it, was erected in 1856-57, and was enlarged in 1861, 1866, 1868, 1874, 1880, and 1890.
Thirty-five years ago was built the structure of red brick trimmed with yellow which continues to disfigure the northwestern part of the campus. Until 1872 it held the general offices, and until 1883 the library, of the University; and prior to 1872 the chapel exercises of the literary department were held in the large lecture room of its second story. Since 1883, however, the law school has had full possession of the building. In the summer of 1892 the sum of twenty-seven thousand dollars was spent in put- ting up an extensive addition with a tower. In March, 1898, work was begun upon a still larger addition toward the south. The tower is to be taken down, the rest of the building is to be remod- elled, and there is to be an entirely new front, of which the lower story will be of light-colored stone, while the second and third story will be of pressed brick. Fifty thousand dollars will be spent upon these improvements.
University Hall, occupying the space between north college and south college, was building from 1871 to 1873, and cost $108,000. Like the wings it is of brick covered with stucco. It contains a hall capable of seating three thousand persons. In the winter vacation of 1895-96 the wooden dome was removed, and it will not be replaced until a new roof shall have been constructed.
In the rear of the north wing of the main building is the cen- tral boiler-house erected in 1879, now used for storage purposes. That same year was built the museum, a structure of red brick which cost forty-two thousand dollars, and which underwent im- portant repairs in 1894. The library, one of the best of the build- ings in the campus, was begun in 1881. It was dedicated Decem-
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THE MICHIGAN BOOK
ber 12, 1883, by public exercises in University Hall, and it cost one hundred thousand dollars.
The first section, forty by eighty feet, of the engineering lab- oratory, was built in 1885. Another section was added in 1888 and a third in 1892, making the total expenditure fifty thousand dollars. In 1888 the physical laboratory and the anatomical lab- oratory were erected. New hospitals-large brick buildings near Catherine street, northeast of the campus- were finished for the two medical schools toward the close of 1891. Three years later Tap- pan Hall was built for the purpose of relieving the crowded class- rooms of the literary department. It cost thirty thousand dollars. In 1894 was reared the stone structure whence light and heat are supplied to the other buildings in the campus.
Of all the University buildings the one most desired by the students was the Waterman Gymnasium. The University Chronicle of October 17, 1868, said: "Each class here, with- in the last thirty years, has asked 'shall we ever have a gymna- sium?' Faculties have promised, Regents have promised, legisla- tures have promised, and the people have promised, but some of those old college boys are growing gray." In April, 1869, the Regents appointed Presi- dent Haven and Professor Tyler a committee " to obtain plans for the con- struction of a building not to cost more than $5,000;" and The Castalia for 1868-69, in its editorial welcome to the class of '72, said: " Before you gradu- ate you will see in all like- lihood, a new gymnasium completed." But it was UNIVERSITY HALL. found that the sum men- tioned was inadequate; other needs of the University were deemed more pressing; and for long the gymnasium consisted of the campus itself, with two upright posts, a cross-bar, and a rope, for equipment.
Twenty years ago the growing interest in athletic sports led to an energetic revival of the gymnasium project. A fund was started by the students, and to it were added contributions from
I3
OUR ALMA MATER
friends of the University and the profits from football and baseball games, from college publications, from student entertainments, and from the sales of college songs. Yet the sum realized in twelve years from all sources was little more than six thousand dollars; and as aid had been sought in vain from the state, the prospect of securing a building seemed remote. In the college year 1889-90, Mr. Joshua W. Waterman, Yale '44, a prominent citizen of Detroit, who during the sixties had taken much interest in field sports at Ann Arbor, and whose son-in-law, Dr. Ernest T. Tappey, was a Michigan graduate, offered to give twenty thousand dollars to the gymnasium fund if a like sum were raised by others. This con- dition was met in April, 1891, and in 1894 the building was com- pleted and opened. The sum realized from savings and subscrip- tions was about forty-nine thousand dollars, sixteen thousand less than the expenditure upon building and equipment. Large gifts from former Regents Hebard and Barbour, and contributions from others, have made it possible to add to the gymnasium a wing for the use of women students; but enough money to com- plete the interior of the new part has not been raised.
The twenty buildings owned by the University, and the arrangements for heating and lighting them, represent a total out- lay of a million of dollars. An extensive addition to the library, and a separate building for the fine-art collection, have became necessary; and it is hoped that before many years shall have passed University Hall and the museum building will be replaced by structures worthy of our Alma Mater.
There are in all the libraries of the University about 123,000 bound volumes, 18,000 unbound pamphlets, and 1,400 maps. The law library contains about 14,000 volumes, and the library of the medical department has about 8,000. The libraries include special collections of great value, such as the McMillan Shakespeare lib- rary, the Parsons library of political economy, the Goethe library, and the Hagerman library of history and political science.
In the museum are collections illustrative of natural history, the industrial arts, chemistry, materia medica, archæology, ethno- logy, and the fine arts. The works of art belonging to the Univer- sity are in galleries in the library building. Among them are the original casts of the works of the late Randolph Rogers, the six hundred paintings-some of them of considerable value-of the Lewis art collection, and many good casts from the antique.
The annual income of the University is now about $400,000,
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THE MICHIGAN BOOK
of which amount the sum of $164,000 is derived from students' fees. The fixed income from the fund held in trust by the State and from the annual one-sixth mill tax is about a quarter of a mil- lion of dollars-equivalent to the interest, computed at five per cent, upon an endowment of $4,500,000. Yet the requirements of the institution are far in advance of its income. Money is needed for books, for buildings, for graduate scholarships, and for fellow- ships. A million a year could well be spent by the University; and the State of Michigan would profit by giving the University that amount to spend.
Venerable for the eighty-one years through which it has been transmitted to us, and honorable for the official connection which it implies with one of the greatest of the American sovereignties, the name of our Alma Mater has not satisfied all persons. Just as Canadians speak of "The States ", a term never used by educated persons in this country, so men who should know better talk and write of " Ann Arbor University"; and the substitution of the latter title for "University of Michigan " has been advocated with apparent seriousness in the columns of an undergraduate magazine. If a short title is needed, " Michigan " suffices. The Latinized name " Universitas Michiganensium " appears in the catalogue of 1848; and diplomas awarded to graduates use the title " Universi- tas Reipublica Michiganensium ". In a catalogue of the Delta Phi society the name is Latinized thus: " Universitas Michiganiensis".
The original seal of the University is rather less than two inches in diameter. It represents the Goddess of Wisdom direct- ing the attention of an ingenuous youth to the Temple of Fame perched upon a lofty mountain; below is the explanatory legend " Minerva monstrat iter, quaque ostendit se dextra sequamur "; around the whole within concentric circles are the words " Univer- sity of Michigan ". This seal never was engraved for printing- at any rate no representation of it appears in the catalogues or other publications of the University-but impressed upon paper of a light-green hue it adorns thousands of diplomas. From 1858 to 1878 the coat-of-arms of the State appeared upon the cover or the title-page-frequently upon both-of the annual catalogue.
December 14, 1894, the Regents adopted an entirely new seal, an inch and three-fourths in diameter. This displays a shield charged with a lighted antique lamp set upon an open book, which itself rests upon a closed volume; below the shield, in a scroll, is. the motto "Artes Scientia Veritas ". For crest there is a rising
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OUR ALMA MATER
sun with rays which fill the back-ground of the inner circle of the seal. The shield bears the horizontal lines that in heraldry indi- cate blue; and presumably the lamp and the books are intended to be of gold, thus utilizing the distinctive colors of the University. A likeness of this seal, having a diameter half an inch shorter than that of the original, has been engraved for printing, and appears upon the title-pages of the catalogues from 1895 to 1898.
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