Arthur A. Crozier — M.A.C.’s forgotten forester

Arthur Alger Crozier (1856–1899, M.A.C. ’79) was with the Michigan Agricultural College Experiment Station for a mere four years, but his influence on scientific agriculture was widespread and deep. And although it is not readily recognized today, more than 125 years after his death, his legacy remains visible in a lasting, physical form.

Crozier was born at Hudsonville in Ottawa County, the second of eleven children of Rev. Owen R. L. Crozier, a Millerite preacher of renown, and Maria P. (Alger) Crozier. Arthur graduated in the M.A.C. Class of 1879 and was a founding member of the Union Literary Society. He later took an M.S. degree in botany from the University at Ann Arbor, and held positions as a botanist at both the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. (1887–88) and the Iowa Experiment Station (1888–89). During this time he also served as the Secretary of the American Pomological Society (1887–91), and was the Pomological Editor of Funk & Wagnalls’ Standard Dictionary of the English Language in 1890.¹

Crozier joined the staff of the M.A.C. Experiment Station on March 15, 1894, as Assistant in Agriculture. His experiments and publications ran the gamut of scientific agriculture, with topics including raspberry cultivation, forage crops, potato rot, cereal grains, and hybrid corn. Along with Professor H. W. Mumford, he published Farm Rules, “a neat vest-pocket store of information for the farmers. It contains valuable hints for stock, fruit and grain raisers, tells how to get rid of various pests, gives rules for filling silos, and is worth its price, ten cents, for the other information it contains.”²

During the winter of 1896–97, he was one of several professors and instructors who conducted a series of farmers’ institutes throughout the state, not only to share the latest findings of College experiments, but also to “keep in touch with the lives and experiences of practical farmers [and] become acquainted with the thought of the people.” Crozier visited Harrisville, Allegan, Alpena, Coldwater, Albion, St. Louis, Tawas City, Muskegon, Fremont, Holland, Morley, and (maybe) Mt. Pleasant, presenting the topics of “green manuring,” “clovers and grasses,” and “the family fruit garden.”³

Crozier’s relentless pace—his obituary stated “he was never idle”—might have contributed to the illness that would ultimately claim his life. In 1895, he “contracted a very severe cold from which he has never fully recovered.” This left him susceptible to tuberculosis; in spring 1897, he took a leave of absence to recuperate, first to New Mexico—where he paid a visit to that territory’s College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, now New Mexico State University at Las Cruces—and later to Arizona, San Francisco, and Hawaii. Unfortunately, none of these fresh-air remedies sufficed to heal him, and by summer 1898, he had resigned his position at the College and returned to his family home near Ann Arbor. He died there on January 28, 1899.⁴

Many of M.A.C.’s early names have passed into obscurity, yet in Crozier’s case it might be less about having been forgotten and more about having been erased.

In December 1894, the Board of Agriculture resolved that “the forest areas of the College farm […] should be placed in such condition as to illustrate proper methods of handling wood lots for continued progress.” Notably, since these were part of the college farm, they fell under the authority of the agriculture department and Professor of Agriculture, Clinton D. Smith, rather than William J. Beal, the Professor of Botany and Forestry.⁵

Smith assigned the task to Arthur Crozier, the Assistant Agriculturist, to inventory and assess some 194 acres of woodland. In the 34th Annual Report (1895), he gives the complete tally:

• 55½ acres that he later calls “Woodlot № 1”—now the Sanford Natural Area;
• 7 acres “triangular piece of land” across a public highway from № 1, “mostly cleared and lay as an open common”—more on this below;
• 73 acres marked as № 17 on the map—now Baker Woodlot;
• 58½ acres, fields № 18 and № 19, “all that part of the farm lying south of the D.L.&N. railroad” south to Mount Hope Road. This is the very southern part of the original campus purchase, on either side of Farm Lane south of the CSX railway, today consisting of Parking Lot 89 to the west and an MSUFCU branch, the MSU Scene Shop Teaching Lab, the new (2022) Demmer Engineering Center, and some undeveloped scrub land east to Beaumont Road.⁶

Crozier then goes on to describe in detail the various work done on those lots, and does the same in the 35th Annual Report (1896), albeit with different names: “North Wood Lot (Field № 20)” for Sanford, “East Wood Lot (Field № 21)” for the seven acres east of that, and “South Wood Lot” for Baker. Fields № 18 and № 19 were still set out for forestry but in poor shape as woodlands.⁷

In 1896, the East Wood Lot was planted with the first stand of trees that would later lead to it being named the “Pinetum.” Crozier does not specify who did the planting, but Professor Smith’s report is quite specific:

While the professor of agriculture, with the advice of the professor of botany and forestry, was authorized to take the necessary measures to carry out the wish of the Board, the plans as finally adopted were the work of Professor A. A. Crozier of this department, and Dr. W. J. Beal, the professor of botany and forestry. The execution of these plans has devolved almost entirely upon Professor Crozier, who has from time to time consulted with Dr. Beal.”

35th AR (1896), p. 32, emphasis added.

It’s clear from Smith’s statement that the design and execution of the Pinetum was the work of Arthur Crozier (perhaps with assistance in manual labor from students and farm workers), and that Beal acted as a consultant at most. By that time in his career, Beal—then in his mid-sixties and twenty-five-plus years into his tenure—was unlikely to have taken on the physical work himself.

Nevertheless, that did not stop Beal from making this statement in his History of the M.A.C.:

A small Pinetum of two to three acres was planted by Dr. Beal in the spring of 1896 and is now (1913) most attractive.

Beal, p. 133.

Smith left M.A.C. around 1908. Crozier was long dead. There was no one left to say otherwise, and so Beal took credit.

A 1917 article about the Pinetum in the M.A.C. Record shows the beginnings of a shift in emphasis, stating it was “set out in 1896 by A. A. Crozier, ’79, under the direction of Dr. Beal.” In 1932, forestry alumni held a dedication at the grove, naming it as the “Beal Pinetum.” Crozier was not mentioned in the M.S.C. Record article about the ceremony.⁸

Today, the Sanford Natural Area and the Pinetum remain quiet, living testaments to Crozier’s work—though his name appears nowhere on campus maps or memorial plaques. His contributions may have been overshadowed in the decades that followed, but they remain rooted in the landscape itself.

1. Yakeley (1900), pp. 24, 45. ↩︎
2. Minutes, 6 Mar 1894, p. 54. MAC Record, 1(18), 12 May 1896, p. 1; 1(30), 11 Aug 1896, p. 5; 1(39), 3 Nov 1896, p. 2; 4(21), 7 Feb 1899, p. 2. ↩︎
3. 36th AR (1897), pp. 30, 399. ↩︎
4. MAC Record, 2(10), 9 Mar 1897, p. 2; 2(12), 23 Mar 1897, p. 2; 3(7), 26 Oct 1897, p. 3;3(36), 24 May 1898, p. 4; 4(21), 7 Feb 1899, p. 2. ↩︎
5. Minutes, 11 Dec 1894, pp. 81–82. 35th AR (1896), p. 32. ↩︎
6. 34th AR (1895), pp. 35–38. ↩︎
7. 35th AR (1896), pp. 32–33. ↩︎
8. Yakeley (1916), p. 13. MAC Record, 22(24), 27 Mar 1917, p. 5. MSC Record, 37(10–11), Jun–Jul 1932, p. 23. ↩︎