Samuel Agnew (1777-1849)

Samuel Agnew was born August 10, 1777 in Millerstown, near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the son of James and Mary Ramsey Agnew. He studied first under the Rev. Matthew Dobbin near his home and then entered Dickinson College in Carlisle. He graduated with the class of 1798 and began studies in medicine with the prominent Franklin County doctor John McClelland of Greencastle. He then went on to Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania receiving his medical degree in 1800.

Agnew returned to Gettysburg to open a practice but moved to Harrisburg in 1807. His long career as a respected practitioner in that city gave him the opportunity to publish in the scientific literature of the day and maintain his contacts with Philadelphia. He served as a surgeon in the War of 1812 between 1812 and 1814 and returned to Harrisburg when his service was over.

Agnew remained an active Presbyterian all his life; he served as Elder of the First Presbyterian Church in Harrisburg for fifteen years, worked for temperance, and was elected a member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. He also was elected to the board of trustees of Dickinson College, serving from 1827 to 1832.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Trustee - Years of Service
1827-1832

Andrew Buchanan (1780 - 1848)

Andrew Buchanan was born on April 8, 1780 to Andrew and Rachel Gilleylen Buchanan in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Despite the death of his father when young Andrew was five and then the death of his step-father in 1790, Buchanan received an education and enrolled with the class of 1798 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. After graduating with his class, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in Harrisburg in 1801 and practiced in York, Pennsylvania for a short time before moving his practice to Waynesburg, in Greene County, Pennsylvania in 1803.

One of the earliest practicing lawyers in the district, a political career at the local, state, and national level followed. He became a county commissioner and served in the Pennsylvania Legislature between 1831 and 1835. Buchanan was then elected to the House of Representatives and served between March 1835 and March 1839 first calling himself a Jacksonian in the Twenty-Fourth Congress and then a Democrat in the Twenty-Fifth. After these two terms, which included service as chairman of the politically charged Elections Committee, he retired from politics and devoted himself to his law practice.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

John Floyd (1783-1837)

John Floyd was born on April 24, 1783 at Floyd Station, Kentucky, twelve days after hostile Indians killed his father. The youngest of three children, he was educated at home and in a nearby schoolhouse before entering Dickinson at age thirteen. He matriculated with the class of 1798 but was forced to withdraw for financial reasons. He rejoined the College in 1801 but after a year was obliged to withdraw permanently with a serious lung illness. He removed to Philadelphia and was placed under the care of Benjamin Rush.

This experience influenced his choice of career and he began a medical apprenticeship under Richard Ferguson of Louisville, Kentucky, after which he entered the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, graduating in April 1806. He began his practice in Lexington, Virginia and then settled in Christianburg, Montgomery County.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

John Bannister Gibson (1780-1853)

John Gibson was born on November 8, 1780 at what is now Gibson’s Mill, in the Shearman’s Valley of Perry County, Pennsylvania. His father, Colonel George Gibson, was one of the 637 killed at the defeat of Major General Arthur St. Clair on the Wabash in Indiana at the hands of the Miami Indians on November 4, 1791. His widow, Anne West Gibson, was left to farm and care for their young children, of whom John was the youngest. John Gibson entered Dickinson Grammar School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1795, and joined the College proper with the Class of 1798. Before he graduated, however, he left to study law under Judge Thomas Duncan in Carlisle and was admitted to the Bar of Cumberland County on March 8, 1803.

Gibson practiced law briefly in Carlisle, before moving first to Beaver, Pennsylvania and then to Hagerstown, Maryland. After a few unsatisfactory years in Maryland, he returned to his house on East High Street in Carlisle and remained a residsent for the rest of his life, and resumed his law practice. In 1810 he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, serving two terms. On July 16, 1813, he was appointed president judge of the 11th Judicial District. For the next three years, Gibson worked in the Court of Common Pleas of Tioga, Bradford, Susquehanna, and Luzerne Counties.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Trustee - Years of Service
1816-1829

George Metzger (1782-1879)

George Metzger was born on November 19, 1782, the youngest of six children. His parents, Paul and Susanna Maria Bower Metzger, were well-to-do residents of Hanover in York County, Pennsylvania. George was sent to study at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1797. He was elected to the Union Philosophical Society but he did not complete his studies and instead went to study law, first with an attorney in Lancaster, and then with David Watts of Carlisle.

In 1805 George was admitted to the Cumberland County bar. The following year he was appointed deputy attorney general for Cumberland and Adams Counties, and from 1813 to 1814 Metzger served as a Pennsylvania State Legislator. Not being particularly fond of public office, he resumed his law practice after only one term in office. He continued to make his home in Carlisle throughout his life, serving as a trustee of Dickinson College from 1825 to 1833, as well as acting as a founding trustee of Second Presbyterian Church. George Metzger died June 10, 1879.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Trustee - Years of Service
1825-1833