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on History 19th


century windows


donated to Pease Auditorium


Josephine Dolsen Pease was just 37 when


she died, leaving behind fi ve children. Her husband, Frederic H. Pease, was the popular chairman of the music department at Michigan State Normal College, now Eastern Michigan University. She was a pretty doe-eyed girl with cascades of dark curly hair, studying piano in the Normal College conservatory, when she married her music teacher in 1859. Upon her death, the newspaper The Ypsilantian noted her “loveliness of face and character.” After her death, Frederic Pease donated a stained glass window to Ypsilanti’s St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in her memory. The couple had been married in the church and were members throughout their life together. Built in 1858, the church still stands on Huron Street. Josephine’s window consisted of three stacked panels in sunny orange and yellow geometric patterns. A lily in somber blue and green graces the top arched panel and the bottom panel is inscribed, “In Memory of Josephine Dolsen Pease 1840-1877.” It was common practice for the bereaved


to donate ornate and expensive stained glass windows to churches like St. Luke’s. Walk into the church today and the towering arched windows all bear plaques of dedication on the windowsills below them. But these grand old windows are not the originals; most were installed in the 1940s to replace the aging 19th century windows that preceded them. Josephine’s window had been removed


even earlier, in the 1920s, when an addition to the church required replacing its spot with


After decades in storage, two stained glass panels donated by Frederic Pease are now on display in Pease Auditorium.


8 Eastern | WINTER 2016


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