Class of 1830

Albert Ramsey was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1813. He and his brother, William Sterritt Ramsey, were the sons of William Ramsey (1779-1831) who was the Jacksonian representative during the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd United States Congresses and died in office. Both brothers entered the local Dickinson College with the class of 1830 but did not graduate. Both brothers were, however, elected to the Union Philosophical Society at the College, Albert in the class of 1829 and William with the class of 1830.

Few other details of Ramsey's early life are available but he was admitted to the York County bar in November 1834. According to items held in the Gettysburg College Special Collections, he received a master's degree in 1838 from Pennyslvania College in Gettysburg. He had served as District Attorney and was also editor of the York Democratic Press.

William S. Ramsey was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on June 12, 1810. He and his brother Albert C. Ramsey were the sons of William Ramsey (1779-1831) who was the Jacksonian representative during the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd United States Congresses and he died in office. Both brothers entered the local Dickinson College with the class of 1830 but did not graduate. Both were, however, elected to the Union Philosophical Society at the College, Albert in the class of 1829 and William with the class of 1830.

Ramsey studied the classical subjects he had begun at Dickinson in Europe and served as an attache with the American Legation in London. He was elected to the Twenty-sixth Congress in 1838 and was reelected in late 1840. Ramsey was suffering from a liver complaint, most probably from the effects of alcoholism. He had left his home in Carlisle on election day without telling anyone, though his brother had travelled from his own home in York to care for him. Shortly after his reelection, William Sterrett Ramsey shot himself through the right eye in a room at Barnum's Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland on October 18, 1840. He was thirty years old.

Philip Thomas was born the son of a prominent physician in Talbot County, Maryland on September 12, 1810. He attended his home academy in Easton and then went on to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, entering with the class of 1830. He attended during two of the most chaotic years in the history of the College concerning student discipline. Thomas was involved with the November 24, 1828 incident in which the college janitor was ejected from his apartments in the dead of night and damage was caused to the rooms. In December, Thomas and several others were suspended for a month when the faculty discovered their role in this incident. Thomas served his suspension but then was dismissed for refusing to sign the pledge of good behavior that the faculty was requiring of students, after a late January "riot" caused by the mandatory attendance of daily chapel resulted in the suspension of the entire student body. He returned to Maryland and took to studying the law privately. He was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1831.