Class of 1827

Richard Armstrong was born in Turbotville, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania on April 13, 1805. He entered Dickinson College with the class of 1827 and upon graduation entered the Princeton Theological Seminary. He was ordained by the Baltimore Presbytery on October 7, 1831 and a month later sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts on a mission to the Pacific Islands. Armstrong helped make up the "fourth reinforcement" of the Presbyterian mission to the Hawaiian Islands, arriving in May 1832. He first took charge of the mission at Nukahiva in the northern islands of the Marquesas group, known then as the Washington Islands. From there he went to the mission at Wailuku, Maui in July 1834 and served there until 1840. He returned to Honolulu on Oahu to take up the leadership of the First Church in November 1840 upon the return of Hiram Bingham, first leader of the mission, to the United States.

Richard Bennett Carmichael was born the only son of William and Sarah Downes Carmichael to an old and wealthy Maryland family in Centreville, Queen Anne County on December 25, 1807. His father had shared rooms in Annapolis with future chief justice Roger Brooke Taney and the two men remained friends till William died in 1853. Richard was schooled locally and then entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1827. While at the College he was elected to the Union Philosophical Society in 1825 but withdrew later to attend Princeton, where he graduated in 1828. He subsequently studied law and opened a practice in his home town in 1830.

Almost immediately after starting his legal career, he was elected to the Maryland house of delegates and two years later, at the age of twenty five, was elected to the United States Congress as a Jacksonian Democrat. He served one term, returned to Centreville, and later, in 1841, went again to the state house, where he served multiple terms over more than two decades. He remained very active in Democratic politics, acting as a delegate to the party's national convention. in 1856. In 1858 he was appointed an associate justice on the 10th Judicial Circuit that encompassed four local counties on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, including his own.

James H. Graham was born in West Pennsborough Township in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania on September 10, 1807. His father was Isaiah Graham, who served two terms in the state senate and became an associate judge, serving from 1817 to 1835, when he died. The younger Graham attended Gettysburg Academy under David McConaughy and then entered the junior class at Dickinson College. He graduated with honors in the class of 1827 and took on the study of law with Andrew Carothers in Carlisle. He was admitted to the bar in November 1829 and began his practice in the town.

Graham soon built a solid reputation and Governor Porter appointed him as state district attorney in 1839. He served for six years before declining a reappointment. In 1851 he widened his interests when he began a twenty year tenure as the president of the Carlisle Deposit Bank. The same year he was elected at the president judge of the tri-county Ninth District of Pennsylvania and was elected once again in 1862. The following year his alma mater awarded him both an honorary doctorate and appointment as professor of law. He headed the Dickinson College law department from 1862 to 1882. He served also for many years president of the board of trustees of the Second Presbyterian Church of Carlisle.

John Krebs was born in Hagerstown, Maryland on May 6, 1804, the son of William and Ann Adamson Krebs. The senior Krebs was a merchant and postmaster in the town and John received his early education there before he went to work as a clerk in his father's post office. His father died in 1822 and soon after he became determined to join the Presbyterian Church. After instruction at the local academy, he entered Dickinson College in February 1825. Krebs graduated in the class of 1827 with high honors and commenced pastoral studies under the Rev. George Duffield of Carlisle. He also received an appointment at the Dickinson Preparatory School and taught there between 1827 and 1829. By 1829 he had been licensed to preach in the Carlisle Presbytery, but, in May 1830, he briefly entered Princeton Theological Seminary. As soon as November, 1830, he had been formally ordained and taken up a post as pastor of the Rutgers Street Church in New York City.

James Xavier McLanahan was born near Greencastle, Pennsylvania in 1809. He was the grandson of renowned Pennsylvania political figure Andrew Gregg (1755-1835) and second cousin to Andrew Gregg Curtin, Class of 1837. He graduated from Dickinson College with the class of 1827, studied law, qualified to the Franklin County bar and set up a practice in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

In late 1841, he was elected to the state senate and served there between 1842 and 1844. He was elected as a Democrat from the Sixteenth District to the United States Congress for its 31st and 32nd sessions, serving between March 1849 and March 1853. While in Washington, he was the chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, but declined renomination in 1852.

James Xavier McLanahan died in New York City on December 16, 1861 and was buried in Chambersburg. He was 52 years of age.