Professor Williams served the University long and faithfully, and only resigned his active work in 1875. In 1876 the alumni established a Williams Professorship Fund which eventually amounted to nearly $30,000. This eased his last years until his death in 1881 at the age of 79 years. Although the fund was subsequently greatly lessened by very careless administration, it now amounts to something over the original sum and is administered by the Regents in the form of a retiring allowance, the holder being nominated by the Alumni Association.
The Rev. Joseph Whiting, Yale, '23, under whose charge was the classical training of the six youngsters of that first class, was a man of different type. A fine scholar, he made Greek and Latin "glow with life and beauty," and by his distinguished bearing formed a happy complement to the "jovial and rotund" Williams. His death while he was serving his term as the annual President just before the first class was graduated, was recognized as a great loss by the students, as well as by the Regents, who acknowledged "his urbanity and gentleness of manners," and "his knowledge of character and other properties which especially fitted him to act the part of a governor and counselor of youth."
Professor Douglass Houghton died during the same year, 1845. The services of these two men, as well as those of Charles Fox, Professor of Agriculture, and Dr. Samuel Denton of the first Medical Faculty, are commemorated by the little weather-beaten monument with the broken shaft, which has doubtless aroused the idle curiosity of thousands of students, who have never taken the trouble, however, to decipher the Latin inscriptions which set forth the life records of these early professors.
In 1842 Dr. Abram Sager, a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1831), who later became the first Dean of the Medical Faculty, came to the University as Professor of Zoölogy and Botany. He was then about thirty-two years of age and had for some time been connected with the State Geological Survey as botanist and zoölogist. His contributions to the University while in that position formed the foundation of the present zoölogical collection. One of his students speaks of him as "of exceedingly sensitive mind and heart and of very high and pure morality." A Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, the Rev. Edward Thomson, Pennsylvania, '29, was appointed in 1843, but served only one year. He was succeeded by the Rev. Andrew Ten Brook, Madison University, '39, who took a vigorous part in the University's life until his resignation in 1851, not to return until 1864 as Librarian--and historian of the University's early days. Professor Ten Brook was of the Baptist persuasion, exceedingly well read, particularly in the literature of his chair. Ordinarily in his classes he was master of the situation, "so long as he had Dugald Stewart's Metaphysics before him," but when discussion became free in his classes and "scholastics were let loose" one of his thought students they "got a little the better of him." That he was a shrewd and honest observer with remarkably little personal prejudice--even in memories of trying times, is shown by his book on "American State Universities" which offers much that is fascinating to those interested in the first days of the University.