358 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



nobleness of character -which ^ve do well to imitate. These men lived lives of 

 toil unknown to the present generation. They cleared the heavy timber from 

 the land, root, and branch ; they have cultivated and drained the soil, planted 

 orchards of choice fruit, buildcd comfortable dwellings and fine barns, bought 

 and bred choice stock, among the earliest and of the best in the State ; they 

 have so carefully nourished tlie soil that Macomb county stands to-day among 

 the first in average yield of crops. They established schools and founded 

 churches, and in their toilsome but happy homes, reared to noble manhood 

 and Avomanhood, sons and daughters. Had I ability equal to my zeal, I would 

 write their names imperishable. Many of them have gone from us; some still 

 remain, with whitened locks and three score and ten years behind them. We 

 cherish the memory of those who are gone ; we honor and revere those who 

 remain (may they yet find an historian to do them justice). 



Young men and women of Macomb, they leave to yon noble monuments of 

 their labor, in these fine farms and pleasant homes, and nobler monuments in 

 their lives of independence, of industry, and virtue. I charge you to cherish 

 their memories, follow their examples, and teach them to your children to the 

 third generation, so that in the coming days when agriculture shall sit the 

 noblest industry of the nation, Macomb county will be foremost in crops and 

 stock, in fruits and flowers, in fertile farms and pleasant homes, and more 

 than all in noble, cultured men and women. 



THE EARLIER HISTORY OF THE MICHIGAN STATE AGRI- 

 CULTURAL COLLEGE UP TO ITS RE-OR- 

 GANIZATION IN 1861. 



BY PRESIDENT ABBOT. 

 [Read at Hastings Institute.] 



The ordinance of 1787 for the government of the Northwestern Territory 

 ordains, ''That religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good gov- 

 ernment and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education 

 shall forever be encouraged." Michigan, a state formed out of this territory, 

 has lived faithfully up to the spirit of this famous ordinance. Her liberality 

 to her institutions of learning, and their success, have given her a wide and 

 honorable fame throughout the Nation, and to no inconsiderable degree 

 throughout the world. 



The crowning glory of her educational system is the University. But some- 

 thing approaching her fame has come also to her Agricultural college. A 

 military chieftain of a gulf state, elected president of the Agricultural college 

 of that state, has exhibited to our board of agriculture a written order from 

 his own board, to visit our Agricultural college, and take a graduate, if possi- 

 ble, as a professor in bis own, and he took two, one of whom is still doing them 

 excellent appreciated service, and the death of the other was chronicled in 

 their state as of the nature of a state calamity. Maine and Oregon, Texas 

 and Minnesota have or have had her graduates as professors, and thirty of 

 her short roll of graduates have been called to permanent places of trust in 

 the colleges of the land. The college has, at this time, graduates as officers 

 in the Agricultural colleges of New York (Cornell), Indiana, Mississippi, 



