Moses Coit Tyler

Born in Griswold, Connecticut, in his childhood, his family moved several times, to Constantia, New York and also to several locations in Michigan, settling in Detroit in 1842.

To recover he attended Boston's Normal Institute for Physical Education for six months, where he became a disciple of Diocletian Lewis and his calisthenic training regimens.

After recovery, he settled in England and established himself as a lecturer and essayist; initially as an evangelist for Lewis' musical gymnastics, but transitioning to studying and contrasting American and British society.

[4] For much of the 1870s, Andrew Dickson White had been promoting the study of American history at Cornell University, having hired George Washington Greene, William C. Russell, Hermann E. Von Holst, and John Fiske in various roles as visiting professors and lecturers.

At the University of Michigan, while employed as an English professor, he proposed American literature and history be added to the curriculum.

He was self-taught as a historian, and placed high importance on collection and use of primary sources, including After noting that White and Cornell had arranged for George Washington Greene to be a visiting professor of American history in the early 1870s, he wrote a series of letters to Andrew White and Benson Lossing on the subject, and proposing himself as a permanent professor of American history at Cornell.

Supplementary to these two is his Three Men of Letters (1895), containing biographical and critical chapters on George Berkeley, Timothy Dwight and Joel Barlow.

[1] Tyler House, located within the East Quad dormitory on the University of Michigan's Central Campus, is named in his honor.