Class of 1812

Claudius Berard was born in France in the port city of Bordeaux on November 21, 1786. Of a relatively wealthy family, he received a classical education and when his conscription order came to enter the Napoleonic armies his father purchased for him a substitute. This substitute was later killed in the Peninsula Campaigns in 1805. Whether or not this influenced his decision to leave France is unclear but he did arrive in New York in early 1807. Some time soon after he arrived in Carlisle and enrolled at Dickinson with the class of 1812. In 1810, his superior capacities in Latin and Greek, along with his capability and interest in modern languages, found him engaged at the College as a "teacher" of French and some Spanish - this was, at last, Rush's "long wished for" completion of the curriculum to include modern languages.

Robert Cooper Grier was born on March 5, 1794 in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, the eldest of the eleven children of Presbyterian minister Isaac Grier, a member of the Dickinson class of 1788 and his wife Mary Cooper Grier. Schooled by his father, he entered Dickinson at seventeen and finished in one year as a graduate of the class of 1812. Following this, he served briefly as the principal of the Dickinson Grammar School. He then joined his father at his Northumberland Academy, teaching Latin and Greek, and replaced him as headmaster when he died in 1814. He studied the law and was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1817.

He began practice in Bloomsburg and then moved to the county seat at Danville. There he married Isabelle Rose, in 1829, and developed a thriving private practice. Thanks to his staunch Jacksonian views he was named in 1833 as President Judge of the District Court of Allegheny County. He served that bench for thirteen years and developed a deserved reputation as a highly competent judge.

Alexander L. Hayes was born in Kent County, Delaware on March 7, 1793, the son of Manlove and Ziporrah Laws Hayes. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1812 and after graduation studied law with Henry Moore Ridgely of Dover, Delaware. Hayes passed the bar in Delaware in 1815 and began practice in the state.

Continuing to practice law, Hayes moved to Philadelphia in 1821 and then to Reading, Pennsylvania in 1822. In 1827, he relocated again to Lancaster when he was appointed an assistant judge of the District Court of Lancaster and York Counties. Hayes was made president judge of that court in 1833. He served another fifteen years before retiring in 1849 to concentrate on his Lancaster practice and to venture into business, notably as the president of the Conestoga Steam Mill Company. Hayes was also very active in civic affairs; he served as the president of the board of school directors in Lancaster and as a trustee of the Millersville Normal School, today's Millersville University. He also served on the board of trustees for Dickinson College between 1837 and 1841. In 1854, he was persuaded to once again sit on the judge's bench, this time for Lancaster, and being reelected regularly, served until 1874.

Hayes was married, and he and his wife had several daughters. Alexander Laws Hayes died in 1875 in Lancaster. He was eighty-three years old.

William Carr Lane was born on a farm in Fayette County, Pennsylvania on December 1, 1789. He attended Jefferson College and then went on to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as a member of the class of 1812. He left to study medicine in Kentucky, at Louisville.

He served in the War of 1812 as a surgeon's mate and then went to the University of Pennsylvania for further studies in medicine. He served again in the army, as post surgeon at Fort Harrison, under General Zachary Taylor, and then in a similar post at Fort Bellefontaine in Missouri in 1818. He resigned the following year to take up a medical partnership in St. Louis. On April 5, 1823, Lane was elected as the first mayor of the newly incorporated city of 4000 people. He handled the laying out of the city's infrastructure particularly well, and the citizenry re-elected him seven times in two tenures, 1823-1829 and 1837-1840. He served as a Democrat for a session in the state legislature in 1826, although he failed in his bid to represent Missouri in the U.S. Congress.

George Latimer Potter was born into a distinguished Revolutionary family at Potter's Mills in what is now Centre County, Pennsylvania on June 13, 1795. He was one of seven siblings, including his elder brother, William Potter. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1812, along with his brother but, unlike William, graduated with his class. Like his brother, he then studied law and passed the Centre County bar.

He moved to Danville, Pennsylvania to open a law practice. He also commanded briefly a Danville militia company called the "Columbia Guard." George Potter died on February 15, 1822 at the young age of twenty-six.

William Wilson Potter was born into a distinguished Revolutionary family at Potter's Mills - in what is now Centre County, Pennsylvania - on December 18, 1792. He was one of seven siblings, which includes, George Latimer Potter, his younger brother. He attended a Lewisburg, Pennsylvania Latin School under the Reverend Thomas Hood and then, along with his brother George, entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1812. He did not graduate but returned to Bellefonte in Centre County to read law with Charles Huston, his future brother-in-law.

Called to the Centre County bar in 1814, Potter built a large practice and a reputation as a hard-working advocate. In 1836, Potter was nominated as the Democratic candidate for a seat in the Twenty-Fifth Congress of the United States and was overwhelmingly elected. He gained a name for himself in Washington D.C, especially concerning the thorny matter of the United States Bank, and was re-elected in 1838.

Potter married Lucy Winter in March, 1816. At what appeared to be the point of a rising national notice, he died suddenly on October 28, 1839 in Bellefonte. He was forty-eight years old.