Class of 1797

Robert Kennedy was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1778, the ninth of the twelve children of James and Jane Maxwell Kennedy. He was educated in local and classical schools and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1797. He was elected to the Union Philosophical Society and graduated with very high standing and then returned to study theology with Reverend Nathanael Sample, pastor of the Lancaster Presbyterian congregation. He was licensed to preach on August 20, 1799 under the auspices of the Upper Octorara Presbytery and spent the next several months as a supply preacher to the vacant churches in the area, including the Presbytery of Carlisle.

Henry Moore Ridgely was born in Dover, Delaware on August 6, 1779. His father, Charles, was a doctor and Delaware colonial and state legislator who had been a delegate to the first state constitutional convention in 1776. His mother, Ann Moore, his father's second wife, kept a large and strict household that included her four step-children along with her own five. Ridgely studied at New Ark Academy, in Newark, Delaware in 1794 and left for Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania a year later. While at the College he was active in the then fledgling Union Philosophical Society. He graduated in 1797 and studied law, first in Lancaster under Charles Smith and then with his elder step-brother Nicholas in Dover. He was admitted to the Delaware bar in 1802.