Hillsdale College Students Visit, Clean Grave Site of College’s First President
Students and faculty take spring break trip to Philadelphia to honor memory of first Hillsdale College president, Daniel McBride Graham
Hillsdale, Mich. – On Sunday, March 10, a group of Hillsdale College students and faculty began their spring break with a trip to the grave site of Hillsdale’s first and fourth president, Reverend Daniel McBride Graham, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Hillsdale College juniors Joseph Toates and Calvin Zabrocki, along with visiting assistant professor of classics Joshua Fincher, visited the Mount Moriah Cemetery and spent a day working there with a local volunteer organization, Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery, in their maintenance of Graham’s grave site.
“At Hillsdale College, we often reflect on the impact of our historic forebears, but this trip to Philadelphia gave some of our students the chance to experience that impact in a tangible way,” said Fincher. “We are thankful for the opportunity to work alongside the volunteers at Mount Moriah Cemetery to pay our respects to one of our College’s earliest pioneers, survey the site, and search for a potential headstone.”
Daniel McBride Graham served as Hillsdale College’s first and fourth president. During his first term in 1844, he helped to establish the College, then called Michigan Central College, with just five students enrolled. He left the College in 1848 to serve as a pastor in Maine, but returned to the presidency in 1871 and led the College through its rebuilding following a fire that destroyed most of the campus.
Graham was a Free Will Baptist pastor, serving churches across the Northeast and Midwest. He moved to Philadelphia in 1879, where he resided with his family until his death in 1888. An abolitionist and supporter of women’s voting and education rights, Graham wrote for the publications The Free Baptist, The Morning Star, and The Baptist Quarterly Review throughout his life.