Cemetery and Professor's Monument

On September 30, 1845, the Regents decreed that a “Cemetery for the University” should be laid out on the east side of the campus. Professor Whiting was to have been buried there, and an appropriation was made for a monument to him. This “tombstone” is apparently the monument that today stands next to the Hatcher Library.

The “Professor’s Monument,” as it is known, is a broken shaft with memorials to four early members of the faculty: Rev. Joseph Whiting, Professor of Greek and Latin, died July 20, 1845; Douglas Houghton, professor of Chemistry, Mineralogy and Geology, drowned in lake Superior, October 13, 1845; Rev. Charles Fox, Professor of Agriculture, died July 24, 1854; and Dr. Samuel Denton, Regent and Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and of Pathology, died August 17, 1860. The cemetery was never used.