Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/41

Rh bers of the Board of Trustees, and many of them were deeply interested in the welfare of the institution. The city began to feel a pride in it. The best families sent their sons into its classes. The first catalogue of the University was issued in the summer of 1860. It showed that in the college there had been two classes, and that the Sophomore class numbered eight and the Freshman class ^welve. The preparatory department had one hundred and ten pupils and the Law School attendance had been forty-eight, making a total of one hundred and seventy-eight. The following year the number increased to two hundred and twenty-five. Then came the War of the Rebellion. More than one hundred students enlisted. Nevertheless, in 1861-62 there were one hundred and eighty-four students; in 1864-65 the attendance reached two hundred and one, and in 1866-67 it numbered two hundred and ninety- one. At this tune the faculty comprised fourteen members.

On the death of Senator Douglas in the spring of 1861 the trustees determined to make the mam building a memorial of him as the founder of the University, and to take measures for its erection. In 1863, through the agency of Thomas Hoyne, the Chicago Astronomical Society, formed December 24, 1862, secured the largest telescope which had been produced up to that time, and Mr. J. Y. Scammon offered to build an observatory in which it might be mounted in connection with Douglas Hall. The trustees accordingly voted on July 7, 1863, "that steps be immediately taken for the completion of the main building of the University, the erection of which has become indispensable to the proposed Observatory." The Observatory was built by Mr. Scammon at a cost of about thirty thousand dollars. The telescope, dome, etc., costing about eighteen thousand five hundred dollars, were the contribution of the Astronomical Society. The building was named Dearborn Tower, Dearborn being the maiden name of Mrs. Scammon. The main University building, Douglas Hall, had cost one hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars. When work on it was suspended it was estimated that it would require over thirty thousand dollars to complete the building. It was built, not to accommodate increasing numbers of students—the attendance for 1862-63 showing a falling off from that of the preceding year of more than fifteen