Plaque Text

This plaque commemorates the grant of lands from the Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewadimi (Potawatomi), through the Treaty of Fort Meigs, which states that “believing they may wish some of their children hereafter educated , [they] do grant to the rector of the the Catholic church of St. Anne of Detroit … and to the corporation of the college at Detroit, for the use of the said college, to be retained or sold, as the said rrector and corporation may judge expedient … ” The rector was Gabriel Richard, a founder and first vice president of the corporation of the college, chartered by the territorial legislature as the University of Michigania in 1817. These lands were eventually sold to the beneift of the University of Michigan, which was relocated to Ann Arbor in 1837.