Class of 1814

Jeremiah Chamberlain was born on January 5, 1794, the son of a Revolutionary War colonel named James Chamberlain. Young Jeremiah grew up at "Swift Run," the family farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He prepared at a classical school in York County before attending Dickinson College, where he graduated in 1814. In 1817 he was a member of the first graduating class of Princeton Theological Seminary, and upon his return to Carlisle, was ordained by the Carlisle Presbytery. Chamberlain spent the next year performing missionary work in the Southwest. He returned to Pennsylvania in 1818 and began preaching in Bedford, Pennsylvania.

Mordecai McKinney was born in Middletown in central Pennsylvania in 1796. His parents, Mordecai and Mary (Molly) Chambers McKinney, who owned a store in the town, sent him to Dickinson College in Carlisle where he graduated with the class of 1814. He then studied law under Stephen Duncan of Carlisle, the father of his classmate Robert Duncan, and was admitted to the Dauphin County bar in Harrisburg in May 1817.

He served as district attorney of Union County between 1821 and 1824; he was then clerk of the Dauphin County commissioners from 1824 until October 23, 1827, when he was appointed an associate judge of the county court. Seen by most as honest and modest, McKinney did not acquire more than a comfortable income but poured his attentions into the study of the law. He published profusely on the subject, including the well known McKinney's Digest of the Laws of Pennsylvania as well as The Pennsylvania Justice of the Peace in two volumes in 1839 and The American Magistrate and Civil Officer in 1850, among others.

James Sterrett Woods was born on April 18, 1793 in Dickinson Township near Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the son of Samuel and Francis Sterrett Woods. He was prepared for college at the Hopewell Academy of John Hooper and entered the local Dickinson College with the class of 1814. Upon graduation with his class, he enrolled at the Princeton Theological Seminary and, in 1817 and 1818, he was licensed to preach, first in New Brunswick, New Jersey and then with the Huntingdon Presbytery in central Pennsylvania.

Woods was offered a half-time position in McVeytown, was ordained as a Presbyterian pastor in April, 1820, and spent much of his time evangelizing among the small town in the hills of the area, preaching in school houses and barns. In April 1824, he also took on the pastorate at Lewistown, Pennsylvania. In 1837, he concentrated his efforts with the latter church, taking on the full term position at $600 per year. He remained in that post for the remainder of his life. Woods had taught at a classical school in McVeytown and was also instrumental in the building and operation of the Lewistown Academy. He was honored with an doctorate of divinity from Princeton in 1850.