The first recorded gift from an individual to the university came from a well-to-do fur trader who never set foot in Ann Arbor.

Charles W.W. Borup was a Danish physician who wanted to see that his children also experienced the joys of learning. While leading an American Fur Co. outpost in the Wisconsin Territory on the western shore of Lake Superior, Borup persuaded his boss to provide a governess to teach his children.

“You have a family yourself and well know the anxiety a parent must feel for his children’s education,” Borup wrote. Borup and his wife, Elizabeth, had nine children.

“Dr. Borup was by no means the coarse and ribald person which the term ‘fur trader’ usually calls to mind,” wrote Professor Russell E. Bidlack, first dean of what was known as the U-M School of Library Science. Rather, Borup and his family lived a comfortable life in LaPoint, at the tip of Wisconsin’s Madeline Island. They frequently ordered books — medical textbooks, religious tracts, travel guides, novels — for their home.

In 1840, Borup shipped Brockhaus’ Konversations-Lexikon, a highly regarded German encyclopedia set, to Ann Arbor. It would be nearly a year before the first students arrived on campus for classes. But with Borup’s gift and several thousand books purchased for the university in Europe by botany professor Asa Gray, U-M had its first gift and a solid scholarly foundation in its fledgling library.

Borup’s donation comprised 13 volumes. On the flyleaf of the first volume, he wrote: “Presented to the Library of the University of Michigan by Chas. W. Borup, Lapoint L. Supr. 1840.”

The volumes can be found in U-M’s Special Collections Research Center.

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