A Brief History of East Lansing

Category: M.A.C. People

  • Professor Samuel Johnson and the “Johnson Affair”

    Samuel Johnson (1839–1916) was born at Springfield, New York, the son of Squire Johnson and Adelia (Hotchkin) Johnson. He attended Cazenovia Seminary in New York, receiving an M.S. degree. In September 1864, Johnson married Eliza A. Clark and they moved to Dowagiac, where he taught school. Around that time, he purchased a roughly hundred-acre plot…

  • Susanna Anderson (M.A.C. ’91)

    Among the twenty-one women who graduated from the agricultural course prior to 1896, one stands out for how little we know of her: Susanna Anderson Hillman (M.A.C. ’91). Sadly, what remains of her story is a brief and tragic one. Susanna Anderson, known as Susie to her family and friends, was born in 1865. I…

  • 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…

  • Polly Akers, Chappie Chapman, and the Alfalfa Eta Society

    This is the story of two mischievous students at the Michigan Agricultural College, and a secret society that might never have existed. Among the many benefactors of Michigan State University, one of its more famous names is that of Forest Hammond Akers (1886–1966, M.A.C. w/’09). Akers, who worked as a salesman for Reo Motors before…

  • Professor Anna Bayha

    Anna Elizabeth Bayha was born at Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1886. She graduated from Ohio State in 1910 with a B.A. degree. For a few years she was an Assistant in Domestic Arts at Kansas State Agricultural College, and from around 1914 to 1918 was Instructor in Textiles and Clothing at the University of Minnesota.…

  • The other Mrs. Kedzie

    Starting in 1903 and continuing for many years afterward, items in the M.A.C. Record made frequent mention of an East Lansing rooming house known as “Mrs. Kedzie’s.” The assumption appears to be that everyone in that day knew who Mrs. Kedzie was. Today, even though her family name is well known, she is not. So…

  • Sarcastic Lad’s progeny today — a reconsideration

    In my article about Belle Sarcastic and Sarcastic Lad, reprinted in the Summer 2022 issue of the Spartan Dairy Newsletter, I wrote, “Today it is estimated that thousands of registered Holsteins worldwide can trace their bloodlines to Sarcastic Lad.” This bold claim was plausible given the available evidence, and I still believe it to be…

  • The Twenty-One

    The only women to graduate from the Michigan Agricultural College prior to the Women’s Course When Williams Hall was completed in 1869, the Board of Agriculture decided the dormitory could accommodate female students in some of its first floor rooms, and ten women were enrolled in 1870. They only remained in school for that year—by…

  • The Seeds of Knowledge, Sown Far and Wide

    A shorter version of this article was originally published as a tweet thread on 12 Feb 2022, the 167th anniversary of the founding of the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan. Michigan Governor Fred Warner (M.A.C. w/’84), in his speech at the Semicentennial celebration of the Michigan Agricultural College in 1907, said: You come…