Class of 1848

John A. J. Creswell was born on November 18, 1828 at Port Deposit, Maryland, then called Creswell's Ferry. He attended a local academy and then went on to enroll at Dickinson with the class of 1848. He was an excellent student, was elected to the Belles Lettres Society, and delivered the valedictory oration at his commencement.

William Daniel was born on remote Deal's Island in Somerset County, Maryland on January 24, 1826. He was educated locally and then matriculated at Dickinson with the class of 1848. While at the College he was a member of the Union Philosophical Society. Following graduation he studied law and began practice in Maryland in 1851. He was elected to the state legislature in 1853 and, following attempts to bring local choice temperance laws to the floor, was reelected as a member of the American Party, moving to serve the Maryland Senate in 1858. He resigned before the year was out, moved to Baltimore, and became an avid anti-slavery Republican. During the Civil War, he took part in the Maryland constitutional convention on the emancipation of the slaves in the state.

Theodore George Wormley was born in Wormleysburg, Pennsylvania on April 1, 1826. Shortly thereafter he and his family moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania where he spent his childhood. Theodore Wormley became a pupil at the Grammar School of the local Dickinson College in 1843. On July 9, 1844, Wormley joined many of his grammar school classmates in the freshmen class of 1848 at Dickinson College. He was active in the Union Philosophical Society but, under the influence of Spencer Fullerton Baird, William Henry Allen, and Thomas Emory Sudler, he excelled in the sciences and mathematics. His skills at Greek and other subjects were a different matter, however, and his marks overall after his sophomore year gave him the lowest ranking in his class. He did not enroll as a full time student in the junior class of 1848 but entered Philadelphia Medical College instead, where he received his degree in 1849.