The John Monteith microfilm collection consists of correspondence, diaries, sermons, and papers of other family members. The originals of these materials are also available at the library; to best preserve the originals, access is limited to the microfilm copies.
The correspondence includes letters from Monteith to members of his family and others discussing current events, his work, travel, places visited, temperance reform, slavery, and bank failures. There are also letters to/from Monteith's wife, Abigail, his daughter, Sarah, his sons George, John Jr., Charles, and Edwin, and scattered letters from other relatives and friends. George's letters cover his service as an officer in the Fourth Michigan Infantry during the Civil War. Besides the letters there are diaries kept by Monteith (1815-1838), notes on his library, sermons and a volume of sermon outlines, speeches, notes on class lectures and other subjects, personal account books, a notebook (1820) containing Chippewa-English vocabulary, student notes (1797-1798) taken by Alexander Monteith at Dickinson College. In addition, there is a manuscript play written by John Monteith Jr. entitled, "The Raging Firelands," and a biography of Abigail Monteith, written by her son, Edwin (1859).
Of special interest is the annual report, Nov. 1818, of John Monteith to governor and judges of Michigan Territory concerning the University of Michigania.
John Monteith was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on August 5, 1788. He graduated in 1813 from Jefferson College (name later changed to Washington and Jefferson). He continued his studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, graduating from there in 1816. Responding to a call to preach the gospel to the Protestant citizens of Detroit, Monteith moved to the Michigan Territory soon after graduation. In 1817, Monteith and the Reverend Father Gabriel Richard, Catholic Bishop of Michigan, along with other individuals began in Detroit the school which would become the University of Michigan. The name given for their institution was the Catholepistemiad or University of Michigania. Monteith served as first president with Father Gabriel Richard as vice president. During the five years that Monteith spent in Detroit, he also founded the First Protestant Society of Detroit (which became First Presbyterian Church); he also organized Michigan's oldest Presbyterian Church in Monroe; and he helped organize the Detroit library society.
In 1820 Monteith married his first wife, Sarah S. Granger. After only five months of marriage, Sarah died while visiting her family in Ohio. Monteith married his second wife, Abigail Harris, of Florence, Ohio in August 1821. Abigail traveled with John to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where he had been appointed to the chair of ancient languages. He later taught in Cambridge, New York and Germantown, Pennsylvania. Abigail was deeply religious and worked with her husband caring for an Academy in Cambridge, NY. In 1832 the Monteith’s moved to Elyria, Ohio, where Abigail cared for a young ladies boarding school in addition to raising the couple's nine children (only four survived).
In 1845, Mr. and Mrs. Monteith moved to Blissfield, Michigan to continue their religious missionary work. John served as the pastor of the Presbyterian Church and Abigail hosted prayer meetings and educational lectures in their home. The Monteith’s stayed in Blissfield for ten years, then returned to Elyria. John Monteith died on May 27, 1868 and Abigail died in 1880.
