East Lansing, Michigan, was incorporated as a city in 1907, but its true beginnings date back more than fifty years earlier, when the state Legislature established a college for the teaching of scientific agriculture on the banks of the Red Cedar River, in the barely developed hinterland a few miles east of the new, wood-frame Capitol building. The two entities have grown in tandem ever since, and are now a beautiful college town with tree-lined neighborhoods and an excellent public school system, and a world-class university with seventeen degree-granting colleges educating over 49,000 students.
This site contains essays on the people, buildings, and events in the conjoined histories of East Lansing and Michigan State University, with a particular interest in the Michigan Agricultural College era (1855–1925). A timeline of the years 1849 through 1933 provides a guide to those events.
A note regarding alumni
Throughout this site, alumni of the school are denoted with their year of graduation in parenthetical marks such as “M.A.C. ’06.” These do not reflect all the name changes that Michigan State University has had over the years:
1855 Agricultural College of the State of Michigan
1861 State Agricultural College
1909 Michigan Agricultural College
1925 Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science
1955 Michigan State University of Agriculture and Applied Science
1964 Michigan State University
The above example would be more accurate as “S.A.C. ’06,” but for the sake of simplicity this site conflates the marks into three eras, M.A.C. (1855–1925), M.S.C. (1925–1955), and M.S.U. (1955–present). As should be obvious, “M.A.C. ’91” refers to 1891, while “M.S.U. ’91” refers to 1991.
The alternative “w/” signifies someone that studied “with” a class year—but did not graduate. Two well-known examples are Frederick Cowles Jenison (M.A.C. w/’07) and Forest Akers (M.A.C. w/’09).
Usage Conditions
A Brief History of East Lansing by Kevin S. Forsyth is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.