page_title: History of the University of Michigan
section_title: The Catholepistemiad (1817–1821)
hierarchical_section_title: History of the University of Michigan / The Catholepistemiad (1817–1821)
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing of the Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania, in Detroit The original University building, built in 1817, at Bates and Congress in Detroit.
context_page_description: The history of the University of Michigan began with its establishment on August 26, 1817 as the Catholepistemiad or University of Michigania. The school moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor in 1837, on land offered to the university by the city. The first classes were held in 1841, and eleven men graduated in the first commencement ceremony in 1845. Although the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan was formed as a new legal entity in 1837, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in 1856 that it was legally continuous with the Board of Trustees of the University of Michigan that was formed in 1821, and with the Catholepistemiad, or University, of Michigania that was formed in 1817.
  The University of Michigan has since expanded to become one of the top universities in the United States, with one of the largest research expenditures of any American university as well as one of the largest number of living alumni at 526,000. The university is also recognized for its history of student activism and was the first American university to use the seminar method of study. It was also the location chosen by President John F.
context_section_description: Shortly after the Territory of Michigan was formed in 1805, several of its leading citizens recognized the need for a public education system. As early as 1806, Father Gabriel Richard, who ran several schools around Detroit, had requested land for a college from the governor and judges appointed by the President to administer the territory. Governor William Hull and Chief Justice Augustus B. Woodward passed an act in 1809 to establish public school districts, but this early attempt came to little. Woodward harbored a dream of classifying all human knowledge (which he termed encathol epistemia), and discussed the subject with his friend and mentor Thomas Jefferson at Monticello in 1814.
  In 1817, Woodward drafted a territorial act establishing a "Catholepistemiad, or University, of Michigania," organized into thirteen different professorships, or didaxiim, following the classification system he had published the year before in his A System of Universal Science. He invented names for these using a mix of Greek and Latin so they could be "engrafted, without variation, into every modern language": Anthropoglossica (Literature), Mathematica (Mathematics), Physiognostica (Natural History), Physiosophica (Natural Philosophy), Astronomia (Astronomy), Chymia (Chemistry), Iatrica (Medicine), Œconomica (Economical Sciences), Ethica (Ethics), Polemitactica (Military Science), Diëgetica (Historical Sciences), Ennœica (Intellectual Sciences), and Catholepistemia (Universal Science).
  The Didactor (professor) of Catholepistemia was to be the President, and the Didactor of Ennœica the Vice-President. Under the act, the Didactors exercised control over not only the university itself, but education in the territory in general, with the authority to "establish colleges, academies, schools, libraries, museums, atheneums, botanical gardens, laboratories, and other useful literary and scientific institutions consonant to the laws of the United States and of Michigan, and provide for and appoint Directors, Visitors, Curators, Librarians, Instructors and Instructrixes among and throughout the various counties, cities, towns, townships, or other geographical divisions of Michigan."
  The act was signed into law August 26, 1817, by Woodward, Judge John Griffin, and acting governor William Woodbridge (Governor Lewis Cass was absent on a trip with President Monroe). Father Richard was granted six didaxiim (and the Vice-Presidency), and the Rev. John Monteith, who had moved to Detroit a year earlier after graduating from Princeton Theological Seminary, was granted seven (and the Presidency).
  When it came to funding the project, Woodward being a Freemason himself looked to Zion Lodge No. 1 of Detroit for financial support. On September 15, 1817 Zion Lodge met and subscribed the sum of $250 in aid of the university, payable in the sum of $50 per year. Of the total amount subscribed to start the university two-thirds came from Zion Lodge and its members.
  The cornerstone of the university's first building, near the corner of Bates St. and Congress St. in Detroit, was laid on September 24, 1817, and within a year both a primary school and a classical academy were functioning within it.
caption: Drawing of the original University building at Bates and Congress in Detroit.
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