The University of Michigan

by Wilfred Byron Shaw

CHAPTER XII

TOWN AND CAMPUS

It was a happy stroke of fortune that fixed Ann Arbor as the location of the University of Michigan. A literal interpretation of history may suggest that politics and speculation had their share in the selection of the site, but these factors might have operated quite as easily in favor of some other Michigan village. The fact remains that Ann Arbor was chosen. This assured to the University an individuality and an opportunity for self-realization that might have been lost if a town destined to a more rapid expansion had been selected. It has given Michigan a special character among most of the larger American universities and has had a vital influence on the development of the institution, which has grown proportionately far more than the town. The result has been that Ann Arbor has become one of the most attractive academic centers in the country, with a distinctive charm in her homes and shady streets, that strikes the visitor no less than the beauty of its location and the dignity of many of its public buildings.

Ann Arbor lies in the rolling country of Southern Michigan, thirty-eight miles west of Detroit, in the quietly picturesque valley of the Huron River. The University and a good part of the present town lie upon the top and slopes of a gentle hill which falls away to the valley levels on all sides except toward the northeast. From this situation arises one of the characteristic features of Ann Arbor; the ever-present glimpses of distant hills covered with rolling farm lands and woodlots, toward which almost any of the longer streets lead the eye.

At the time the University was established the flow of immigration from the East was at high tide. Ann Arbor had already become one of the progressive and settled communities of the new State; but farther to the West other districts were constantly being opened and towards them a steady stream of settlers pressed on. One of the early inhabitants of Ann Arbor has given us a picture from his boyhood memories, of the long line of wagons filled with household goods and drawn by horses and oxen, which sometimes stretched along the pike as far as the eye could reach. The men who drove these wagons and the women who rode above with the youngest of their little families were not adventurers; they were essentially home-seekers. Their strong fiber was shown by their energy and courage in seeking thus to better their condition in this new country, which at last had in prospect means of communication with the seaboard states through the Erie Canal and the railroads soon to be built. It was settlers with this stuff in them who gave to the University of Michigan the support that spelled success instead of the failure which had attended many similar efforts.

The very name, Ann Arbor, recalls an idyll of pioneer life. It sketches in a picture that is no doubt more charming than the bitter mid-winter reality faced by the first two families, whose tents were pitched in a burr-oak grove beside a little stream flowing toward the nearby Huron. John Allen of this party, a vigorous young Virginian, was the driving force which first turned the tide of settlement toward Ann Arbor. By chance, on his way West, he met E.W. Rumsey and his wife in Cleveland and induced them to come with him to Michigan. They drove overland and arrived at the site of their future home some time in February, 1824. A tent and sled box set over poles with blankets for sides formed the first dwelling, and here some months later Allen welcomed his wife, whose name was Ann. Mrs. Rumsey's name also happened to be the same, and when in the spring the grape vines spread their leaves over the neighboring trees, these first settlers found a little natural arbor, which they called, doubtless at first in jest, "Ann's Arbor." The name persisted, however, and it was formally adopted by general acclamation at a celebration held on the fourth of July, 1825, when some three hundred persons sat down to a dinner at Rumsey's coffee-house. So far had civilization progressed in a little over a year. By that time there were nine log houses in the little settlement, which had already begun to take its place as one of the way-stations in the general tide of westward travel. For some time, however, communication with Detroit was difficult, and it was not until two years before the University was opened that the long-awaited railroad actually reached Ann Arbor. Therefore, for many years the little settlement had to be largely self-supporting. Such water power as the Huron could furnish was quickly developed; sawmills, gristmills, and a little later, woolen mills arose at favorable sites, the ruins of which are still to be seen where the relics of the dams now serve as hazards for the venturesome paddler.

The first tendency of the inhabitants was to settle on the rise above the little stream; known as Allen's Creek, which furnished the water supply for the earliest pioneers. This rivulet, practically hidden nowadays, runs through the city on a course roughly parallel with the Ann Arbor Railroad tracks. The site of the burr-oak grove and the original encampment was almost certainly on the hillside on the south side of Huron Street, a block or so west of Main Street. This was reported to be an old dancing ground of the Pottawatomies, and an Indian trail used to run to the Huron along the stream. Rumsey built a log cabin on this spot immediately and established in it a resting-place for travelers, known far and wide as the Washtenaw Coffee House. The second building was erected by Allen on higher ground at what is now the corner of Huron and Main streets. It was painted a bright red and the place for some time went by the name of "Bloody Corners." At one time the two apartments of the little log house held fourteen men and twenty-one women and children, divided into family groups by the simple expedient of hanging blankets. In what seems now an incredibly short time life was moving in organized channels. A store was opened in September, and others soon followed; more buildings were erected; a physician or two swelled the population; in a little over two years a county court was established; and finally, in 1833, the village was incorporated.

For many years the little town was divided into two separate districts by the Huron River, and a determined effort arose to make the section on the north side the main business and residential quarter. This was not to be; though the old business blocks still stand across the Broadway bridge, and many of the finer homes of that period, now falling into decay, remain on the hills along the turnpikes to Plymouth and Pontiac.

It was probably not until the location of the University was fixed that the center of Ann Arbor's population began, very slowly at first, to turn to the south and east, and mounted the slopes of the hill upon which the University stands. Certain it is that for years the Campus was practically in the country, and only gradually did the dwellings of the townspeople rise in the neighborhood. Aside from the University there was nothing east of State Street, except an old burying ground and one dwelling, occupied by the ubiquitous Pat Kelly, whose freedom of the agricultural privileges of the Campus made him quite as important a financial factor of the community as the members of the Faculty he served.