A tweet-stream version of this article was published in August 2022 as part of the #LostEastLansing project.
In the 1976 book At the Campus Gate: A History of East Lansing, Max Skidmore Marshall (1897–1985), the son of Bacteriology Professor Charles E. Marshall, remininiced about growing up in East Lansing as one of the M.A.C. “campus kids.”
Max Marshall was an infant when his family built their home on College Delta in 1898. When his father received an appointment at the Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1912 and the family moved to Amherst, he was just 14. His interview for At the Campus Gate took place more than six decades later. Yet despite this distance of years, his memory of his youth was quite clear. Best of all he named each of his neighbors on the Delta, and as a lifelong scientist he did so systematically, house by house. In the days when the houses lacked address numbers, faculty directories only listed addresses as “Delta,” and Lansing city directories omitted M.A.C. entirely, Max’s reminiscence is a trove of local information.1
However, Max’s recollection wasn’t perfect. When he came to the house at the north end of Delta Street, on the corner of Grand River Avenue, he said it “belonged to Frederick Cowles Jenison, who always had a peppermint in his pocket for kids.” A sweet memory, pardon the pun—but not true.
Frederick Cowles Jenison is a very famous name at Michigan State University to this day. He died a millionaire in 1939 and bequeathed his entire estate to the school, which paid for Jenison Fieldhouse (named for him) and upgrades to the old Faculty Row №7 to become Cowles House (named for his mother).
But Fred was with the class of 1907—he was just a student for most of the time that Max lived here. Moreover, he did not even live on or near campus, but rather in the Jenison family home at 403 Seymour Avenue in Lansing, a splendid Edwyn Bowd-designed brick American Queen Anne, still standing two blocks north of the Capitol and in use today as law offices.
The actual owners of 125 Delta Street were Luther F. and Mary Jenison. Luther was an insurance salesman, no apparent relation to Fred, and 19 years his senior. And while it may have been just a case of mistaken names, Max Marshall’s error masks a darker tale.
In addition to selling insurance, Luther Jenison worked for the Michigan Agricultural College for several years. In 1911 he was assistant bookkeeper in the office of the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture, who at the time was Addison Makepeace Brown. (The secretary was the second-in-command executive officer of the College after its president, and held responsibility for all financial and record-keeping activities—in essence, its CFO.)
Among the accounts Jenison handled were those of the local societies, precursors of today’s fraternities and sororities. At the time, East Lansing had no local banks, nor even branch offices of Lansing banks, so it made sense for the societies to keep their financial accounts with what was commonly known as the “college bank.”
On Wednesday, July 26, head bookkeeper Jacob Schepers noticed a discrepancy in the accounts and confronted Luther Jenison with his suspicions. Luther “was unable to make a satisfactory explanation.”2
Later that day, according to Schepers, Jenison “made a complete confession to him of his alleged peculations, and informed him that the amount was about $3,500.” This is roughly equivalent to $97,000 today. Jenison promised to return the next day to assist in straightening out the accounts.
That evening, Secretary Brown returned to town from a business trip, and around 11 p.m. he and Schepers paid a visit to a rooming house on M.A.C. Avenue where Jenison was staying. (He had been renting a room there for about a year, after Mary divorced him on charges of extreme cruelty.) They found him not at home.
According to the owner of the rooming house, a Mrs. F. J. Wyse, Luther Jenison had spent the evening “nervously pacing the path in front of the house for several hours, finally disappearing from view” before Brown and Schepers arrived. After they left, Luther returned. One can only surmise that he was avoiding a confrontation.
He rose early the next morning, read a few passages aloud from the Bible, and then placed a .32-caliber revolver to his heart. Mrs. Wyse heard the shot and found him dead, “sitting bolt upright in his rocking chair, in a natural position.”
Although they were divorced, that breakdown in their relationship did not prevent Mary Jenison from holding Luther’s funeral at her home on Delta Street. His death certificate states he was interred at Mount Hope Cemetery in Lansing.
In the end, Luther’s estate covered a little over half of the $3,580 that he embezzled. Addison Makepeace Brown, who as Secretary of the Board held ultimate responsibility for the accounts, had to pay back the remainder out of his own pocket.3
One can only imagine how shocking these events must have been at the time. East Lansing was a very small and very tight-knit community. M.A.C. was growing fast but still only had about 1,500 students. It is no hyperbole to say that everyone involved with the college knew everyone else.
The MAC Record, the publication perhaps most closely related to the societies that lost their money, was on summer hiatus and never mentioned the incident in its fall issues. The official minutes of the Board of Agriculture only discuss the financial settlement of the accounts, and appointment of a replacement as assistant bookkeeper (who was required to provide a security bond as a condition of employment).4
This may be a wild surmise, but perhaps this is why Max Marshall got it wrong. As a kid he knew “Mr. Jenison” as a kindly, generous man. A giver, not a taker. So in a way it makes sense that in his memory he might have replaced Luther Jenison with a much more generous giver, Frederick Cowles Jenison.
Mary Jenison continued to live in her house on Delta Street, for many years the last remaining original resident of College Delta, until her death in 1942.† The house became a rental; its last known residents were Beta Theta Pi (1947–1955). By 1958 it was replaced with a gas station. Wyse’s rooming house on M.A.C. Avenue is also no longer standing.
An editorial aside: Did this tragedy, and more specifically the fact that Addison Makepeace Brown had to pay off the shortfall in his office’s accounts, help to spur the creation of the East Lansing State Bank in 1916, where Brown was its first president?
- Kestenbaum, pp. 115–116. ↩︎
- This and all quotes to follow are from LSJ, 27 Jul 1911, p. 1. ↩︎
- Minutes, 28 Feb 1912, p. 103. ↩︎
- Minutes, 16 Aug 1911, pp. 87–88. ↩︎
- † This distinction is something of a technicality: Robert M. Snyder (M.A.C. ’14), son of M.A.C. President Jonathan Snyder and his wife Clara, lived on the Delta at 258 Michigan Avenue until his death in 1971. However even though the Snyders built that house in 1898, the family did not move into it until 1915, and thus were not its “original” residents.↩︎
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