Elizabeth Martha Farrand (March 31, 1852 – August 17, 1900)Ancestry.com. Michigan, Death Records, 1867-1950 (database on-line). Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. was an author and librarian. She wrote the second book-length history of the University of Michigan and the one that was most frequently cited thereafter, History of The University of Michigan, in 1885.Ann Arbor : Register Publishing House, 1885 Prior to that she served as assistant librarian at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from 1878 until 1884 at a time when that position and the university librarian were the only full-time positions in the library and both were listed among the “faculty” positions in the university's general register. In a seemingly surprising career change, she left the library after being accepted to the university's medical school, from which she received an M.D. degree in 1887. After a year's residency training at the Woman's Hospital in Detroit, she spent the rest of her life in private medical practice in Port Huron, Michigan, where she died in 1900.
Early life Farrand was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on March 31, 1852, the daughter of Lucius S. and Frances Shaw Farrand, members of a pioneering Michigan family. Her grandfather, Bethuel Farrand moved from New York State to Detroit in 1825 and from there to Ann Arbor in the same year. At the time of his arrival there were 26 families in the city. After being involved in various businesses, including the Water Works of the City of Detroit he became the first probate judge of Washtenaw County, Michigan, of which Ann Arbor is the county seat and he served as a leader in a variety of local religious and social organizations.Michigan Historical Collections. Lansing [etc.]: 1876, VI, 1883, 443-446 contains Bethuel Farrand's story of these years Elizabeth Farrand attended the public schools in Ann Arbor, graduating from the Ann Arbor High School. Her father died in October 1851 at the age of 38 just before she was born. In the 1870 census she and her mother and sister lived together in the family home along with three college student boarders.Year: 1870; Census Place: Ann Arbor Ward 4, Washtenaw, Michigan; Roll: M593_707; Page: 83B; Image: 171; Family History Library Film: 552206 In that year the 18-year-old Elizabeth was “teaching school” according to the census. Her sister, Frances M., died in 1871 and her mother died in 1875. By the 1880 census she was single and without immediate family, living as a boarder herself in another Ann Arbor home.Year: 1880; Census Place: Ann Arbor, Washtenaw, Michigan; Roll: 608; Family History Film: 1254608; Page: 32C; Enumeration District: 223; Image: 0369. Her name is incorrectly listed here as Martha E., but her age and occupation are correct.
Her uncle, David Osborne Farrand (1837-1883) had, meanwhile, become one of the best known doctors in the area, working as a partner in a medical practice in Detroit with Zina Pitcher, one of the Regents of the University of Michigan who played a founding role in the University of Michigan Medical School. Known locally as D. O., David Farrand was born in 1837 and had graduated from the Literary College at the University of Michigan in 1857. After studying in Germany and working in the Detroit wholesale drug business of his brother, Jacob, he graduated from the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1862 and entered the Union army as an assistant surgeon. In 1866 he returned to Detroit to begin his local medical practice with Pitcher who himself died in 1871. He was involved in many activities in Detroit, including serving as president of the early Board of Health, as surgeon for the Detroit Police Department, and as Surgeon in Chief of the Michigan Central Railroad. When D. O. Farrand died in 1883 University of Michigan president James B. Angell presided over his Ann Arbor funeral.Michigan Historical Collections. Lansing [etc.]: 1876, VII, 1886, 602-611. D. O. Farrand's brother Jacob Farrand (1815-1891) became a substantial businessman in Detroit and served as president of the board of the Harper Hospital there from 1860 until his death in 1891. The Farrand School for Nurses training at Harper was named after D. O. Farrand.Woodford, Frank B, and Philip P Mason. Harper of Detroit: the Origin And Growth of a Great Metropolitan Hospital. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964, 303 give brief biographies of the brothers (who were actually half brothers). Their brother Bethuel (1820-1901), known as B. C., became a well known lawyer in Port Huron, Michigan.
Work at the university library The University of Michigan had relocated from Detroit to Ann Arbor in 1837, opening to its first students in September 1841. Even before classes began there the board of regents began preparing for the university library, appointing a librarian, the Rev. Henry Colclazer, at their first meeting in 1837 and buying the books and collections that would undergird the teaching. Colclazer would not arrive on campus, however, until 1841 although a home for the books was provided on the third floor in the “main” campus building opened in 1840 and named Mason Hall in 1843. The library contained about 4,000 volumes there. Colclazer served as librarian until 1845, after which the title rotated among members of the faculty for 11 years. The next person to hold the title was John L. Tappan, son of then university president Henry P. Tappan, who was given the post in 1856. When President Tappan was removed from office by the regents in 1863 they also removed his son as librarian. He was replaced by former faculty member Andrew Ten Brook, who served from 1864 through 1877 when he resigned. Raymond Cazallis Davis replaced him and served from 1877 until 1905. Over these years the library expanded in Mason Hall, moved to the newly built Haven Hall in 1863 and moved into its own purpose-built building in 1883. By 1890 there were 75,000 volumes there.For a useful summary of this history, see Shaw, Wilfred Byron. The University of Michigan, an Encyclopedic Survey .... Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1942. Vol. 4, p 1369-1373 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015020573609?urlappend=%3Bseq=25 retrieved from Hathitrust on April 11, 2015.
Farrand began working part-time as an hourly assistant at the library under Andrew Ten Brook in the academic year 1870/71 for $.15 per hour. One historian of the library's early years, John Cushman Abbott, has written that, in hiring Farrand and another woman at this time Ten Brook was “a pioneer in a difficult field.” In his report to the Regents for the 1870-71 academic year Ten Brook wrote that “two young ladies have also been employed for a portion of the time...to aid in completing and revising the catalog. The experiment in the case of these ladies— viz: Miss Mary Pepper and Miss Lizzie Farrand— is decisive in favor of the policy of employing female assistance for some kinds of labor. There are indeed some services for which they cannot be called upon— for instance, taking down and replacing books belonging upon the higher shelves, — yet in industry and fidelity, and in quickness and accuracy of perception and execution, they are quite in advance of the average young men who could be obtained, and in consequence of there being fewer remunerative place /sic/ open to females they are ready to do faithful service at a pay much lower.”Abbott, John Cushman. Raymond Cazallis Davis and the University of Michigan General Library, 1877-1905. 1957, p 54.
The task of cataloging was important and difficult in these years because at that time there was no accepted system for doing so. Melvil Dewey's decimal classification system was not published until 1876 and not adopted at the University of Michigan Library until 1897. In the meantime the Library used a so-called “fixed” location system, introduced by Ten Brook, organizing shelves and the catalog according to the principle that each book should have a specific fixed place. According to Abbott this meant that books were arranged by topic and more or less in chronological order within topic. Each time a new book was received, though, the entire section's locations and catalog information had to be redone. So it was little surprise that the job of cataloger became important.Abbott, John Cushman. Raymond Cazallis Davis and the University of Michigan General Library, 1877-1905. 1957, pp. ii, 196-213. With the encouragement of Davis the Regents appointed Farrand full-time Assistant Librarian, a position normally held by a man and previously held by Davis himself, at an annual salary of $400 in January 1878.Proceedings of the Board of Regents. Ann Arbor: The University, 1863. 1878-1880, p. 182. By June 1878 she was included on the list of "revised" salaries set by the Board at $500 per year.Proceedings of the Board of Regents. Ann Arbor: The University, 1863. 1878-1880, p. 268-269. In November 1883 her salary was raised to $600 per year.Proceedings of the Board of Regents. Ann Arbor: The University, 1863. 1881-1885, p. 417.
Writing university history It may seem somewhat ironic that each of the first three histories of the University of Michigan was written by authors connected to the university library: Andrew Ten Brook, who had been university librarian, C. K. Adams, who had been chair of the faculty Library Committee, and Farrand. But at a time when library materials did not circulate often, this connection made sense. All the primary and secondary sources for such histories were located in the library.
The first book-length history of the University of Michigan was American state universities, their origin and progress; a history of congressional university land-grants, a particular account of the rise and development of the University of Michigan, and hints toward the future of the American university system written by Andrew Ten Brook (1814-1899) and published in 1875.Ten Brook, Andrew. American State Universities, Their Origin And Progress: a History of Congressional University Land-grants. Cincinnati: R. Clarke & co., 1875. Because the lengthy title of this book was frequently shortened to "American State Universities, their Origin and Progress; a History of Congressional University Land-Grants," only the most thorough realized that the book also contained a history of the university. A second brief history of the university, Historical Sketch of the University of Michigan. 1876, by C. K. Adams was, in fact, just that, a 57-page pamphlet sketching its history invited by the U.S. Commissioner of Education as part of broader effort of the Department of the Interior to celebrate the nation's centennial in 1876.Adams, Charles Kendall. Historical Sketch of the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 1876. Ten Brook spent more pages than Adams’ entire account on the period before the establishment of the university and on speculations about the future of higher education (210 pages on these topics). Adams’ portrayal of the interior development of the University—schools, curricula, buildings, scientific teaching and apparatus—is better developed than Ten Brook's even though the sketch is substantially shorter. In part these differences in emphases occurred because their times at the university were different. Ten Brook had been the pastor of the Baptist church in Detroit when he came to the university as professor of philosophy in 1844. He resigned that position in 1851 during a controversy over secret fraternal societies on campus. He returned to the university as librarian in 1866 and then resigned that position in 1877. Adams had graduated from the University of Michigan in 1861 and remained there teaching history until 1885. He generously acknowledged the influence of Ten Brook's work on the first page of his own. He served as faculty chair of the University Library Committee for many years.