Michigan State University - Red Cedar Log Yearbook (East Lansing, MI)

Page 17 text:

Tx' 'flT.'Z V w 1 ff 14,1 , Maw-mvvf 'D 3 1' ' . , , ., , l f nb ' 'ff' ' Q5-fl L' .1 Q? 2 ' it mfg if K If Workers rushed to complete the boarding hall, Saint's Rest, for the college opening in the spring of 1857. Stumps were left for the students. They turned off the road near the present site of the Home Economics building, and crossed a broken tract, with hardly an acre cleared. They faced a desolate prospect. Three buildings, College Hall, Saintis Rest and a red brick barn, known as The College, the boarding house and the barn, had been set up in a clearing. They were not finished. Around them were building rubbish, mudholes and blueberry bushes. Trees had been felled and underbrush cut away. The slashing had been piled and burned, but charred trunks and stumps lay about in black disarray. But the Gunnisons, like others, saw prom- ise in this beginning. They met all the require- ments Cat least 14 years of age, with good primary educationj , and were enrolled in the first class by the president, Joseph R. Williams. v I 2 Lewis Ransom Fisk, A.B., A.M., LL.D., D.D., was teaching chemistry when the faculty chose him to represent them as acting president after Williams' resignation.

Page 16 text:

This two-story brick horse barn, shown after its conversion to a carpentry shop, was one of the three original 118571 buildings at Michigan State. AMONG its first students were the three Gun- nison boys who lived near DeWitt, eight miles from the college. Early the morning of May 31, 1857, they hitched a team of oxen to their farm Wagon and set out over the dirt and plank roads to attend the dedication and opening of the College. On level stretches, the boys-James, Alfred and Warren-rode, goading the ani- mals with a sharpened stick. Up steep hills they walked. On both sides of the road they saw land cleared by axe and fire. New vlalyf Simple livin and bi b tlzinking Historic College Hall, from an 1857 photograph. Its roof leaked. S Z V we 3 , ima 10

Page 18 text:

In 1862, students scythed grass, professors netted laboratory specimens before re-roofed College hall. xperimentem in thought .ret az dal ring g00l THE IDEA of teaching agriculture in schools was not a new one in the mid-19th century. Most people in the young nation earned their living by the soil, and to teach agriculture was to teach the country's main industry. The pressure groups who fought for agri- cultural schools and colleges did not seek a place where young people could learn how 12 to farmg they wanted them- to study the why', of farming practices, to experiment with new thoughts, to extend their interests beyond the limits of their own clearings. They wanted them to Hnd a way of life as well as a means of living. Their idea was 19th century roman- ticismg they injected the daring of American pioneer action into education.