page_title: John Monteith (minister)
section_title: The Catholopistemiad or University of Michigania
hierarchical_section_title: John Monteith (minister) / Detroit, Michigan Territory / The Catholopistemiad or University of Michigania
caption_attribution_description: English: First Annual Report of the University of Michigania, authored by John Monteith, Nov. 16, 1818
context_page_description: Reverend John Monteith was a Presbyterian minister, educator, abolitionist and a founding father of the University of Michigan, formerly known as University of Michigania or the Catholepistemiad. Monteith served as president of the university from 1817 through 1821. During his five years in Detroit, he also served as the city's first librarian, and founded the first Protestant church in Detroit and the first Presbyterian church in what is now the State of Michigan.
  According to his son, Rev. Monteith was six feet tall, and was straight as a rod. He did not drink liquor, and he was rarely ill. As an abolitionist, a temperance advocate, a defender of the Sabbath, and an educator of young minds, he took it as his personal mission to convince others to accept his beliefs, and was therefore sometimes a controversial figure.
context_section_description: Returning to Detroit, on August 20, 1817, Monteith was summoned to the quarters of Judge Augustus B. Woodward for "an interview on the subject of a university." Six days later, the plan for the university was legally established by action of the territory's executive and judicial officers who comprised Michigan's legislature.  Under the plan, the Catholepistimiad, or University of Michigania, was to be established with professorships in thirteen fields of human knowledge: literature, mathematics, natural history, natural philosophy, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, economics, ethics, military science, history, intellectual science and universal science.  Initially, John Monteith was to hold seven of the professorships, and Father Gabriel Richard, a Catholic priest, was to hold the other six.  In addition, Monteith was to serve as the University's president and Richard would be its vice president.
  The university's officers had authority over all institutions of public education in the Michigan Territory including colleges, schools, libraries, and museums. The cornerstone of the first building, commonly called "the Academy," was laid in Detroit on September 24, 1817.  By August 1818, a teacher named Lemuel Shattuck was able to open his Lancastrian School in the lower story.  So far as is known, no collegiate students were matriculated under Monteith's presidency and thus his duties as president consisted mainly of making plans and helping to raise funds.  On April 30, 1821, a new act was passed, changing the name to the University of Michigan, and abolishing the office of president in favor of a board of twenty trustees.  Although Monteith was offered the chairmanship, he soon left to accept a professorship at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.  It would not be until 1837, sixteen years after Monteith had left Detroit, that classes would first be organized at the university's new home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Nevertheless, the entity formed in 1817 is the direct legal antecedent to today's University of Michigan.
caption: First Annual Report of the University of Michigania, authored by John Monteith, November 16, 1818
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