Alewander Winchell, 83 
The ‘University’ opened with encouraging prospects; but 
within a few days the yellow fever made its appearance in the 
city in a very malignant form, Half the population fled; the 
institution suddenly suspended operations. Two deaths occurred 
in the house where he, with wife and little daughter, was residing, 
but he and his family remained at their post. In November he 
received a letter (dated November 16) from president Tappan of 
the University of Michigan, announcing his election to the chair 
of ‘Physics and Civil Engineering” in that University. This. 
position he quickly accepted, and the Masonic University was. 
abandoned for a long vacation. His fossils were packed for the 
journey, during the long, silent and solemn days of visitation of 
the yellow fever. 
Before leaving the state he paid another visit to Prof. Tuomey, 
taking with him a trunk full of fossils, from which Prof. Twomey 
was permitted to retain all he chose. Among them were the un- 
described Kocene fossils from Allenton. These remained in his 
hands awaiting attention until the federal army visited Tuscaloosa 
during the war, when, with the treasures gathered by Prof. Tuo- 
mey himself, they were devoted to destruction. 
1854. He entered upon his duties at Ann Arbor, the 24th 
day of Jan., 1854, at the full professor's salary of $1,150 per 
year. His family who had visited in Utiea, N. Y., joined him a 
month later. 
The work of the chair devolved upon him a large amount of 
preparation, Instruments and apparatus were wanting, and he 
visited New York to make purchases. No good elementary text- 
books in civil engineering were in existence—a deficiency specially 
felt in the department of railroad surveying. He was obliged to 
compile and originate matter and methods; so that within a year 
or two he had wrought out the material for an original work on 
civil engineering. As a branch of physics he attended to the 
keeping of a complete series of meteorological observations 
which, while he held the chair, he reported to the Smithsonian 
Institution, 
The State Agricultural College of Michigan, then lately estab- 
lished, had not yet been definitely located. The question of site 
had been referred by the Legislature to the executive committee 
of the State Agricultural Society. Seeing that they were about 
to decide, if they had not already decided, on a location in the 
