Class of 1845

Joseph Dysart was born on July 8, 1820 on the family farm, Eden Hill, in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, one of three sons of James and Jane Dysart. His family hired a tutor who introduced him to the classics and then he attended the early public schools of the county. When nineteen, he traveled to Iowa for the land sales that were expected in October 1839. When these sales were postponed he and a friend returned home on foot, covering an average of forty miles a day. Soon after, he entered Dickinson's Preparatory School and then the College in the class of 1845. He was an exemplary student, was elected as a member of the Union Philosophical Society, and on graduation with his class gave the valedictory speech. Following his degree, he became principal of the Hillsboro Male Academy on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Falling ill, he left Hillsboro in 1847 and took up teaching in Mississippi, first as a private tutor and than as principal of the Aberdeen Male Academy in Aberdeen, Mississippi between 1851 and 1853. In his spare time, he studied law and passed the Mississippi bar. He then traveled to Lee County in Illinois where he owned land and took up farming. Selling up to the railroad at a healthy profit, he moved on once again in April 1856 to the town of Vinton in Benton County, Iowa.

Birth: March 11, 1827; North Middleton, Pennsylvania

Death: January 26, 1906 (age 78); Carlisle, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania

Military Service: USA, 1861-65

Unit: Company A, 7th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry "Carlisle Fencibles"

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1845)

Robert Miller Henderson was born in North Middleton near Carlisle, Pennsylvania on March 11, 1827 to William Miller and Elizabeth Parker Henderson. He was prepared at Carlisle High School and entered Dickinson College in 1841. He was an active member of the Belles Lettres Society and graduated with the class of 1845. He studied law with Judge Reed and was admitted to the Carlisle bar on August 25, 1847 though only twenty years old. He served two terms between 1851 and 1853 as an equally youthful Whig state legislator in the Pennsylvania house of representatives.

Robert Samuel Maclay was born on February 2, 1824 in Concord, Pennsylvania, the son of Robert Maclay and Annabella Erwin Maclay, one of nine children. His parents were highly respected members of the community, running a tanning business and actively involved in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Maclay entered Dickinson College in the fall of 1841 and was elected into the Belles Lettres Society. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1845, received his Masters in 1848, and was later honored with a Doctor of Divinity from his alma mater. One year after his graduation, Maclay was ordained in the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. At this time, the Church was suffering the internal struggles that the heated debate over the issue of slavery brought on. In 1847, however, Maclay was appointed as a missionary to China, where he began a lengthy missionary career overseas.

Birth: 1822/23; Montgomery County, Pennsylvania

Death:  1864

Military Service: USA, 1861-64

Unit: 26th Pennsylvania Infantry

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1845 non-graduate)

Albert Rowland came from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. He prepared at the Dickinson Grammar School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania from 1838 to 1839, but then took two years off before becoming a freshman in the College proper in the fall of 1841. Rowland’s student days did not last long as he retired from Dickinson in the spring of 1843; he had in that time become a member of the Belles Lettres Literary Society and had roomed in East College.

Rowland enlisted in the United States Army in 1861 and was killed sometime around 1864.

John Stevens was a great-great-grandson of Adam Miller, the first Euro-American settler in the Shenandoah Valley. He was born at Harrisonburg, Virginia. Records show that he was in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the Dickinson Preparatory School, in 1840. Stevens graduated from Dickinson College in 1845; the next year he earned an M.D. from the University of Virginia. In 1848, Dickinson’s Board of Trustees awarded Stevens an M.A. “in curso” for his continuing medical study at the hospital in Philadelphia.

Sometime thereafter, Stevens moved to the hamlet of Vienna in Jackson Parish, Louisiana where he practiced medicine and acquired a plantation with slaves. He was elected to the Louisiana State Legislature, serving in both chambers. At the onset of the Civil War, Stevens enlisted as 1st Surgeon of the Louisiana 2nd Infantry. By war's end, he had been promoted to Medical Director of the Corps of General John B. Gordon, Army of Northern Virginia, C.S.A.

Littleton Washington was born in Washington D.C. on November 3, 1825, the son of Lund Washington, whose forebears were cousins of the family of the first president. He enrolled with the class of 1845 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and, while there, was an active student, gaining election to the Belles Lettres Society. He was forced, though, to withdraw from the College due to family financial difficulties. He found gainful employment instead as a clerk in the U.S. Treasury.

Washington became a freelance journalist and then took the opportunity offered in a job as assistant collector in the United States Customs House in San Francisco, California, traveling by ship via Panama. He landed in the city at the time of the vigilante violence of 1856 and actively stood with the legal city government against the mob violence designed to rid the city of law breakers. With Buchanan's election, his position went to another and he returned to Washington, this time overland by way of Mexico, experiencing sundry adventures along the unruly and dangerous route. Back in the capitol, he drifted somewhat, fighting the occasional duel and moving on the fringes of government. He supported the hard-line Democrats and, when the split came, he followed his states' rights leanings, at one point helping to organize a pro-southern group called the "National Volunteers." When hostilities commenced in April 1861, he left Washington for Richmond.