Class of 1800

Andrew Carothers was born in 1778 to John and Mary Carothers of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. He attended the McHose schoolhouse until he was about 14 years old. As a younger son, Andrew would not inherit the family’s large farm; to provide for his future, the family apprenticed him to a cabinet maker.

But these plans changed dramatically in January 1798, when the entire family became terribly ill. A servant named Sarah Clark later confessed to putting arsenic in the family’s bread and butter. She claimed to be a rival of a Carothers’ daughter for the love of local man. Finding no way of poisoning only the girl, Clark resorted to poisoning the entire family. Sarah Clark was hung for her crimes, but not before both of Carothers’ parents died of arsenic poisoning. Andrew Carothers survived, but suffered from a form of nerve paralysis that left his limbs and hands crippled.

No longer able to pursue cabinet making as a livelihood, Carothers attended Dickinson College as a member of the Class of 1800. From 1802 to 1805, Carothers studied law under David Watts in Carlisle. In December 1805, Carothers was admitted to the Bar of Cumberland County and established a law firm in Carlisle. He also served on the board of the Carlisle Bank, and was eventually elected to the Town Council. Carothers married Catherine Louden in 1812. After her death in 1820, he married Isabella Creigh Alexander.

George Lyon was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on April 11, 1784, the son of William and Margaret Lyon. His father had been one of the patentees of the 1773 school and was a prominent Carlisle Presbyterian. Lyon attended the local Dickinson Grammar School and joined the Dickinson College class of 1800 in 1797. He became a member of the Union Philosophical Society at the College but did not complete his degree. He instead trained as a lawyer.

Lyon followed his family's prominence in Carlisle, operating a law practice, and was president of a local bank. He served as a member of the Dickinson College Board of Trustees between 1815 and 1833. He was also the president of the Presbyterian Church of Carlisle during the tenure of the well known "new light" minister, George Duffield. Conservative and rigid of principle, Lyon resisted Duffield's revivalist influence on his church. He also suspected and resented Duffield's perceived influence on the operation of the College and its President How. Lyon gathered evidence for a charge of heresy against Duffield and was instrumental in placing Duffield's 1832 book, Duffield on Regeneration, on trial before the Presbytery. Before that matter was concluded, however, Lyon had led seventy families out of the Carlisle church to form the Second Church of Carlisle. This permanent split was the fatal weakening of local Presbyterian support for Dickinson College and the institution closed its doors in the spring of 1832.