Michigan State Normal School at the Columbian World's Fair

The Normal School’s memorial to its Civil War dead was originally installed in the chapel (auditorium) of Old Main. 

Austin George gave this account of how the marker came to be:

Some ten years ago I began the sad service of getting the names of those who had attended the Normal who gave their lives that their country might live. The list has been made as complete as the material at my command would permit.* To disclose and perpetuate these honored names to the students of today and succeeding years, a marble tablet has been prepared and placed upon the north wall in the Normal chapel.

The tablet was dedicated September 17, 1890, at the Annual Meeting of the 17th Michigan Infantry. Speakers included distinguished alumni and Company E veterans William H. Brearley and Irwin Shepard.

After the demolition of Old Main in 1948, the tablet was installed on the exterior of Boone Hall.

In 1991, undergraduate History student Brian James Egen persuaded University leadership to restore the tablet and add the names of two additional fallen soldiers whom Egen had identified in his research. In 1995 the tablet was re-installed in an unprotected section of the exterior wall of Pray-Harrold Hall.