First Annual Commencement
The momentous week began with two nights of lectures at the Cornell Public Library built by Ezra Cornell in downtown Ithaca, the first a technological address about “Modern Engineering” and the second a discourse on the “Limits of Radicalism.” On Wednesday morning, the Board of Trustees met to assess the toil and progress of the first academic year and to plan for the second. In the early afternoon, a procession made its way up to campus to witness the formal presentations of two great gifts to the University.
Local businessperson, John McGraw, provided funds for the building that bears his name, originally envisioned as the McGraw Library Building. The Grand Lodge of Masons of the State performed the ceremony for laying the cornerstone of the building, complete with a metal box time capsule.
His daughter, Jennie McGraw, had given Cornell a nine-bell set of chimes on Inauguration Day the previous fall, and on this day Mary A. White, the wife of President Andrew Dickson White bequeathed a tenth bell. This two and a half ton bell, called the “Magna Maria,” would become the clock bell that chimes the hour from the top of McGraw Tower.
Of the Thursday graduation ceremonies and the Ithaca weather, The New York Tribune reported:
To-day, the first Commencement Day of Cornell University, opened with a delightful atmosphere and a beautiful, clear sky, as if in unison with the eventful occasion which was about to dawn in the history of this Institution. The Commencement exercises went off very satisfactorily. There was a large attendance from all parts of the State….No honorary degrees were conferred, and no Latin was used in any of the ceremonies.
Cornell has never awarded honorary degrees and the University’s diplomas have always been rendered in English, not Latin.