HE UNIVERSITY'S EARLY DAYS

There were several candidates among the towns of the State for the honor
of having the University. Detroit, Monroe, and Marshall were mentioned,
but an offer of forty acres of land by the Ann Arbor Land Company,
previously offered unsuccessfully as a site for the state capitol,
proved the most attractive bid, and the Legislature voted in favor of
Ann Arbor in an act signed by the Governor, March 20, 1837. The town was
then fourteen years old and boasted some 2,000 inhabitants, who
supported four churches, two newspapers, two banks, seventeen drygoods
stores, eleven lawyers, nine doctors, and eight mills and manufacturing
plants, including a good-sized plow factory. Nevertheless it was in
essentials a frontier community. There are those still living who
remember the Indians who came in to town to trade,--presumably at those
seventeen drygoods stores. Transportation was primitive, the first
railroad did not come until 1839; while great tracts of uninhabited land
lay on every side.

Of the twelve Regents by appointment who were members of the first
Board, six had been members of the Constitutional Convention, two were
physicians, and four were lawyers; seven had received collegiate
degrees, while one, Henry R. Schoolcraft, was the best authority of that
time on the American Indian. General Crary appears to have been the only
one who had previously concerned himself with educational matters, so
it is small wonder that some impracticable measures were taken.

To those of us who look back now with the advantage of "hind-sight," the
mistakes of the first Board are obvious. Two tracts of land were
considered as possible sites for the University. The choice fell upon
the wrong one, and we now have the present Campus, undistinguished by
any natural advantages, instead of the commanding location on the hills
overlooking the Huron, recommended by the committee appointed at the
first session. We do not know now why the change was made, though there
must have been some little discussion, as it was only made by a vote of
6 to 5. We can only imagine now how much more beautiful and impressive
the buildings of the future University might have been, lining the brows
of the hills overlooking the Huron Valley, rather than spreading over
the flat rough clearing of the Rumsey farm that by that time had lost
the attraction which the original forest trees must once have given it.
For many years the present Campus