| In 1854, the Hon. Byram Green returned to Williamstown and marked the location of the haystack next to which he had prayed forty-eight years earlier. Interest in the site peaked and in 1855 a group of Williams College alumni purchased a ten-acre tract of land to commemorate the Haystack Prayer meeting. In 1857, Williams President Mark Hopkins and two other alumni, Professor Albert Hopkins and Charles Stoddard, incorporated the Mission Park Association for the purpose of "improving the grounds...and of erecting and placing thereon suitable monuments and other memorials, to commemorate the origin and progress of American Missions." The park was deeded in trust to Williams College in 1885. |    From left to right: Mark Hopkins, Albert Hopkins, and Charles Stoddard. |