Albion, Michigan

The small city of Albion sits on the Kalamazoo River in Calhoun County, about halfway between Detroit and Chicago. The first permanent settler, Tenney Peabody, arrived in eighteen thirty-three, and by eighteen thirty-five Methodist missionaries had secured a charter from the Michigan Territorial Legislature for what became Albion College, one of the first colleges in the Midwest to admit both men and women on equal footing. The college was fully authorized to grant four-year degrees to all students by eighteen sixty-one.

Albion incorporated as a village in eighteen fifty-five and became a city in eighteen eighty-five and grew as a modest manufacturing center serving the region's agricultural economy. Today the college remains the town's defining institution.