State more widely known
through University than
any other means
Among the very first laws enacted by the Legislature of Michigan after its organization as a State was one for the establishment of the State University, founded on the act of Congress of 1826, which appropriated two entire townships of wild land for the special purpose. That action on the part of its original legislators, suggested by a clause in the constitution pg 092enjoining upon the legislature the “encouragement of learning and the general diffusion of knowledge among the people,” was highly creditable to their intelligence, and was the key-note to the subsequent prosperity of the State. A prime mover in this enterprise was the Rev. John D. Pierce, the first superintendent of public instruction; and among the professors first chosen were Asa Gray and Douglass Houghton, the first as professor of botany and zoology, and the second of geology and mineralogy. By careful and judicious management the University has progressed so rapidly that it is now awarded a prominent place among American institutions, and in foreign countries the mother State is more widely known through the fame of her University than through any other means.
From the The Red Book of Michigan; a civil, military and biographical history by Charles Lanman, Detroit, EB Smith and Company, 1871.
1871.
By 1871, The University of Michigan was, more than any other means, the reason any knew there was a State of Michigan.
It would be another 20 years before football even showed up.
Last week I was on campus with one of my grand daughters.
Me and my grand daughter and her parents walked around central campus in the early dark.
It had been 40 years since I was a student and I could have stepped back in time and been right at home.
When I had been there as a student, it was a little more than 40 years that my Dad had been a student.
I am just now realizing that as he walked around the campus with me, he could have stepped back in time and been right at home.
My Dad was at Michigan 30 years after his Dad graduated.
I wonder if his Dad visited him in Ann Arbor and felt like he could have stepped back in time and been right at home.
His Dad, my Grand Father, was the first Hoffman born in the United States.
Now I was walking around that same campus with one of my grand daughters.
We walked up to the bronze M in the center of the Diag, the center of Central Campus.
I asked her if she wanted to go school in Ann Arbor and she said yes but then she is just seven.
I told the tale that if anyone stepped on the M, that person would fail their first test.
She looked at me and looked at the M.
Then she looked me right in the eye and stamped her foot on the M.
Well …
That’s my grand daughter.
Maybe 55 years from now …
No Haiku For You 