Many wonder why Hillsdale College resides in the middle of nowhere. While our small, southcentral city of Hillsdale, boasting a population of 8,000, can hardly be considered a metropolis today, it was formerly considered a prime location, a leading reason why the college moved in 1853.
“The college was fortunate in its location,” Hillsdale College alumnus H.M. Ford said in 1910.
The college was originally founded under the name Michigan Central College in 1844 by a group of Freewill Baptists and then moved to the village of Hillsdale in 1853. Other than those simple facts, few realize that the college’s trustees deliberately chose to move the school to Hillsdale for both its ideal location and the town’s bribe of $15,000.
As described in college historian Arlan K. Gilbert’s book, “Historical Hillsdale College: Pioneer in Higher Education 1844-1900,” Michigan Central College was formed as a frontier college, only seven years after Michigan entered into the Union, and overcame many obstacles before settling in its present location.
Gilbert describes the environment in which the college was founded: “People were few and they were poor. Travel was hard, as life was hard. Every institution of frontier society was conditional; more towns failed than survived, and many more colleges failed than survived. They hung on by threads — often the threads of accidental politics, as whether a railroad decided to build through the town — but mostly they hung on by the will of the founders,” he said.
In 1850 more than 98 percent of Michigan’s population lived in the southern quarter of the state, which directed considerations for sites to build the college.
Spring Arbor extended the most appealing offer to the college: 210 acres of land. The trustees chose to name the institution Michigan Central College (over Spring Arbor Seminary) and opened the school in Spring Arbor.
Despite its humble beginnings, Michigan Central outgrew Spring Arbor’s resources, and college president Edmund Fairfield saw that the eight and one-half miles separating Spring Arbor from the railroad stinted the school’s growth.
On Jan. 5, 1853, the board of trustees voted 9 to 2 to move the college to a better location and formed a committee to begin the search. Following the decision, the board selected Jackson, Adrian, Coldwater, Hillsdale, and Marshall as potential places to move.
It was by accident that Hillsdale became the forerunner. One of the men most influential in the moving process, Professor Ransom Dunn, was traveling through Hillsdale during a snowstorm on Jan. 14, 1853 when he stopped at the Hillsdale House and asked for names of citizens “interested in education.”
By the next day, three citizens took Dunn to examine four potential building sites for the college. When Dunn overlooked what is now campus, he saw a “half-cleared pasture surrounded by a split-rail fence.”
Although Dunn was convinced, the site committee stipulated that the new college community must contribute $15,000 toward the school’s construction. While many at Michigan Central favored Jackson because it was one of the four largest towns in the state, the committee rejected its bid because locals did not align with the college’s abolitionist values.
When Coldwater only offered the college $10,000, the committee turned to Hillsdale, which agreed to the desired $15,000. Also attractive to the site committee was Hillsdale’s prime location on the Michigan Southern Railroad, whose profits exceeded $1 million in 1853. Hillsdale was a railhead, “a significant railroad terminus with large warehouses, the village became the shipping point for three counties,” Gilbert said. In 20 years, it would also become a stop on the trunk line from New York to Chicago. In addition, Hillsdale County boasted the Chicago Military Road, now U.S. 12, the primary route into southern Michigan.
A “gentlemen’s agreement based on honor” on Feb. 16, 1853 confirmed the college’s relocation. By May, the county’s residents raised their goal contribution, a large part of which came from congressman Esbon Blackmar. He gave 25 acres for campus property and $500 in cash, but he stipulated that the land must always be used for education and that Hillsdale County residents compose the majority of college trustees.
In total, township citizens contributed $22,500 to the construction and another $7,000 came from village residents.
The village reaped immediate benefits from its new neighbor. Land as far as seven miles from Hillsdale” rose in value by $2 per acre and population doubled between 1850 and 1860. Yet, as Dunn argued, the biggest benefit received “is not to be estimated by the magnitude of buildings or endowments, but by the increase of mental power and moral force.”
This significance was not lost on Fairfield in 1853 as he said during his cornerstone laying speech that July 4, “The cordiality, the unanimity, and the liberality with which they [Hillsdale residents] have contributed to the erection of the building whose cornerstone is now to be laid, have not often been paralleled in the history of such institutions.”
