Settlers with their wagons crowded the western roads or forced their way through the forests to establish themselves alone. Michigan, with its pine woods, was the western haven for consumptives, and indeed general good health seemed to prevail, despite the fact that we read of ague and malarial fevers and that he was considered fortunate in parts of the country who escaped with only one "shake" per day. Young professional men of good education, allured by tales of healthy breezes or attracted by the stir and excitement of western settlement, sometimes found their way to a cabin in Michigan. During 1837 the immigration continued from New York and New England especially, so that Michigan probably has a larger percentage of people from those parts of the country than has any other of the Western States. At one time we are told that it seemed as if all New England were on the point of moving westward. A Michigan fever threatened to become fatally epidemic in every New England town. Various songs, of doubtful poetic merit, were used to incite the timid "to have mettle hearts." The following stanza will illustrate their cheering quality : Come all ye Yankee farmers who wish to change your lot, Yea, yea, yea; in Michigania. This tide of immigration, of course, soon swept Michigan into the Union. Though the basis of a liberal superstructure for education had been laid in the days of uncertain and unorganized territorial existence, when half or more of the population was French, we must remember this influx from the East and notice that the real plan and scope of the work was outlined and the structure begun in the days of early statehood, or at least in response to the energetic call which came from the pushing eastern immigrants. Michigan was then puffed up with grand ideas and inflated with prospects which have indeed been realized, but which required vigorous faith or a reckless hope that is not always prophetic. We may remember that the University was born in the very heyday of Michigan's youth, when all her veins were full of new blood, and she was unwearied and was not despondent because of hope deferred. In the 20 years that followed the treaty of Ghent the change in Michigan was from a wilderness to a prosperous State. One can scarcely exaggerate the change of those years in manners and customs, in business enterprise, in governmental methods, and even in the physical condition of the country. The territorial government in its first stage. gives little opportunity for individual expression or popular control. But Governor Cass, during an administration of some 18 years—from 1813 to 1831-gave to the people, at various times and as the opportunity offered, chances to express preferences in matters of state, and thus prepared them for the complete self-government that would come with statehood. Michigan long remained in a condition of tutelage, but the apprenticeship was a necessary one, and happily her second governor was filled with ideas of popular sovereignty and possessed of a wide sympathy. The beginnings of general education in Michigan might well be traced perhaps to the printing press. Various papers were published throughout the Northwest before 1800. Cincinnati and Chillicothe early had this means of enlightenment. But in early Detroit the town-crier was the only publisher, and seems to have done his work satisfactorily to the French for years. The church, the center of Roman Catholic life, was the center for news distribution, and at the close of the weekly services the familiar notices were read to the waiting congregation. We are told that even auction sales and the horse races were thus announced, and as time went on an Episcopal lay reader published the time of the next fox hunt or like interesting event. Printing found its way but slowly among a people who had been accustomed to repression. The first newspaper that held up its ambitious head in Detroit was The Michigan Essay or Impartial Observer, first published August 31, 1809. The printing and publishing of the paper have generally been credited to good Father Richard, who was prominent in those days in many things of interest to the Territory. He probably brought to Detroit the printing press on which the paper was printed, but he was not the publisher; for it appears on the paper that it was printed and published by James M. Miller.1 The paper, to say the least, had a short life. There seems to be no positive proof that more than one number was issued, though there is no proof that there was no more. Part of it was printed in French and it had various pretenses to literary flavor, with extracts from Young's Night Thoughts and from Ossian. The Detroit Gazette, that lived some 13 years, had rather a prosperous existence under the patronage of Governor Cass, at whose suggestion it seems to have been established. The type was often poorly set and its turbulent condition often suggested an unsteady compositor, but withal it was an educating and elevating presence in the Territory. Occasionally it dropped into personal abuse and became somewhat too trenchant for the pleasure of all concerned, so that Mr. Sheldon, the editor, at one time found himself in the Wayne County jail as a penalty for criticising somewhat too freely the action of the Supreme Court. Detroit, however, was found sympathetic in the extreme and he was toasted and feasted to his eminent satisfaction. But advertising even of this popular nature failed to bring sufficient funds into the editorial till, and he complains bitterly that "Sometimes we get a pig or a load of pumpkins, and once in a great 1 Recent investigations by Mr. Farmer substantiate this statement, although Judge Campbell, in his History of Michigan, states that Gabriel Richard was the publisher, as does also Mr. Andrew Ten Brook in his book entitled American State Universities, etc., to both of which works I often refer in this sketch. while there is a man who pays cash for his paper." Under these circumstances the aggressive paper came to its end April 22, 1830. The Michigan Herald was issued between 1825 and 1829. A few issues of the Gazette Français appeared from the Michigan Gazette Office, as an appeal to the French of the province, and some other papers led feeble lives of a few years, before Michigan entered into statehood, when a whole crop seemed suddenly to rise from the ground. But these, too, lasted but a short time. The Democratic Free Press and Michigan Intelligencer, however, appeared in May, 1831, and have maintained a vigorous life ever since. 1 With this sketch of Michigan's early condition and settlement, and the means offered for general circulation of news and for popular enlightenment, let us see a little more definitely what was the condition of popular education, what schools or seminaries, if any, existed in the few years before the establishment of the university and the more vigorous and generous efforts for the distribution of learning. Illiterate doubtless the many French citizens of Detroit were, as has been suggested, and so they continued to be in the years of American domination. But we must not be carried away by the sweeping generalities of writers anxious to send back to the East picturesque sketches of Western life. An examination of public records of Michigan will indicate that writing was not an unknown art and many signatures argue a familiarity with the pen. French words are often misspelt, as if there were numerous advocates of a more recent spelling reform movement, but he who has looked at the letters of some of our early statesmen will not hasten to proclaim utter incapacity as a result of orthographical ignorance. Montreal and Quebec sometimes received for education the children of the more prosperous French settlers or of those unusually ambitious.2 Occasionally the English settlers sent their children to the East. Research has discovered traces of a school which seems to have existed at Detroit as early as 1775. There was evidently one as early as 1790, and after the Americans began to come in, when the English gave up the western forts, several schools appeared. In 1797, Miss Pattison and John Burrell appear as teachers. The latter taught for several years. Matthew Donovan and Monsieur Serrier are names of others of that period, the latter gentleman being an irresponsible erratic fellow, who was often in an indeterminate state between drunkenness and insanity. At the beginning of the century Rev. David Bacon opened a school and his wife offered the benefit of an education to girls. But we are told that the prejudice against the Yankees reached even to a Yankee education and the venture did not thrive. For some 10 years from 1806 John Goff, a sour, drunken Orbilius, carried on a disorderly school, his success, if he had any, being due in great measure to the wifely assistance of Mrs. Goff, who seems to have had a more sober disposition and a much sweeter Campbell, History of Michigan, p. 254. 2 Farmer, Hist. of Detroit and Michigan, p. 715. temper. Something like higher education may be seen to emerge from this humble chaos in a certain classical school that was kept up by Mr. Payne in the years between 1812 and 1818. But from our knowledge of the disorderly condition of Michigan in the first half of that period, one feels like predicating an unsatisfactory curriculum and like hinting at the lack of very profound classical erudition. But these are all stepping stones to better things, and possibly one may even make the stony metaphor apply to the school of a certain Mr. Danforth, who opened a school on June 10, 1816, and is reported to have had 40 scholars soon after. The violence of his temper will bear a close comparison with some of the schoolmasters already mentioned, and for brutal exhibitions perhaps he may be given the front rank. Throwing a ruler across the schoolroom at the head of a pupil was varied on one occasion by the use of an open jackknife as a missile, and we are somewhat relieved to learn that indignant parents finally wearied of his brutalities and drove him across the river, where it may be hoped he found more useful occupation and one better suited to his virile nature. Church schools were perhaps somewhat more vigorous than the private schools above described. Even in 1755 we find that there was a director of the Christian school, and in 1804 Father Richard established a ladies' academy, and about the same time a school for young men, where Latin and history, as well as geography and music, appear as subjects of study. If one realizes the utter incompetence of many of the French settlers of Michigan, their ignorance of the com mon trades or the duties of the home, their entire lack of appreciation of the necessary methods of obtaining fair returns from their farms, their content often with semi-poverty when competence awaited thrift or a reasonable acquaintance with the means and methods which an intelligent American farmer seemed to know without learning; if one realizes how great a proportion of the population the French Canadians were, and that their descendants, even in later days, were noticeable material in the superstructure of a prosperous State, he will ask no excuse for the introduction of even the first portion of the following report from the watchful priest, showing the beginnings of an industrial and literary education, which are necessary for the existence of a higher education in our modern sense: Besides the English schools in the town of Detroit there are four primary schools for boys and two for our young ladies, either in town or at Spring Hill, at Grand Marais, even at River Hurons. Three of these schools are kept by the natives of the country, who have received their first education by the Reverend Mr. Dilhet. At Spring Hill, under the direction of Angelique Campau and Elizabeth Lyons, as early as September last, the number of scholars has been augmented by four young Indians, headed by an old matron, their grandmother, of the Pottawatomie tribe. In Detroit, in the house lately the property of Captain Elliott, purchased by the subscriber for the very purpose of establishing an academy for young ladies under the direction of Miss Elizabeth Williams, there are better than thirty young girls who are taught, as at Spring Hill, reading, writing, arithmetic, knitting, sewing, spinning, etc. In these two schools there are already three dozen of spinning wheels and one loom, on which four pieces of linen or woolen cloth have been made this last spring or summer. To encourage the young students by the allowment of pleasure and amusements, the undersigned have these three months past sent orders to New York for a spinning machine of about 100 spindles, an air-pump, an electric apparatus, etc. As they could not be found he is to receive them this fall, also an electrical machine, a number of cards, and a few colors for dyeing the stuff already made or to be made in this academy. It would be very necessary to have in Detroit a public building for a similar academy, in which the higher branches of mathematics, most important languages, geography, history, natural and moral philosophy should be taught to young gentlemen of our country, and in which should be kept the machines the most necessary for the improvement of useful arts, for making the most necessary physical experiments, and framing a beginning of a Public Library. The undersigned, acting as administrator for the said academies, further prays that one of the four Lotteries authorized by the Hon. Leg. on the 9th day of 7 ber (Sept.), 1806, be left to the management of the subscriber. DETROIT, 8 ber (Oct.) 18, N. S. 1808. GABRIEL RICHARD. The plans for industrial education may have accomplished something, though we are disappointed in discovering, 10 years later, a lamentable ignorance of loom and spinning wheel among a great number of the French in the Territory. But in the latter part of this letter is shadowed forth a true college, with legislative support, which the writer seems to honor by the capital letter with which he begins "lotteries," even if he does abbreviate the legislature and give the date of the act establishing the lotteries one year too late. For one of the first things done by the governor and judges who alternately governed and quarreled during the first 8 years of the Territory was to authorize the establishment of four lotteries for the raising of $20,000 for the promotion of literature and the improvement of Detroit. The lotteries, however, were never established, and Detroit, which then, of course, was essentially Michigan, lacked this means of "improvement." A church school seems to have been located at an early day in Hamtramck, on the church farm, and this school, after some vicissitudes, developed into St. Philips College,1 and yet these early efforts at education were not entirely successful, if we judge by an editorial which appeared in the Gazette of August 8, 1817: Frenchmen of the Territory of Michigan! You ought to begin immediately to give an education to your children. In a little while there will be in this Territory as many Yankees as French, and if you do not have your children educated the situations will all be given to the Yankees. No man is capable of serving as a civil and military officer unless he can, at least, read and write. There are many young people of from 18 to 20 years who have not learned to read, but they are not yet too old to learn. I have known those who have learned to read at the age of 40 years. Various schools appeared in the next 20 years, some of which re. ceived public aid and encouragement, but the first school called semi 1 In Farmer's History of Detroit and Michigan are collected many interesting details regarding the growth of private and church schools. The writer of this monograph has found great assistance from the details there given with so much care, after great painstaking and research. |