Benjamin Arbogast (1825-1881)

Benjamin Arbogast was born on November 13, 1825 in Pocahontas, Virginia the youngest of the nine children of farmers Benjamin and Francis Ann Mullins Arbogast. He had early schooling locally but then worked his family's land and served as a local constable. For whatever reason, he determined later to resume his education and after some preparation entered the class of 1854 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in September 1850 at the age of twenty-five. Over six foot tall and with the look of the farmer, he became a popular student with undergraduates and faculty, joined the Union Philosophical Society, and fought his way to be at the head of his class when it graduated.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Faculty - Years of Service
1854-1856

James Williamson Bosler (1833-1883)

James Bosler was born on April 4, 1833 to Abraham and Eliza Herman Bosler in Silver Spring, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. He attended the Cumberland Academy at New Kingston, Pennsylvania before entering the nearby Dickinson College as a member of the class of 1854 along with his older brother John Herman Bosler. Neither brother finished their degrees and James Bosler withdrew from the College during his junior year and moved west.

From 1852 to 1854, Bosler taught school in Moultrie, Columbiana County, Ohio, where he also built his first store. After the store was destroyed by fire, Bosler moved to Virginia. In Wheeling, Virginia, he was admitted to the Bar, but the life of a lawyer did not suit him. Moving further west in 1855, Bosler partnered with Charles E. Hedges in Sioux City, Iowa in the real estate business. Together they established the Sioux City Bank under the name Bosler & Hedges. Bosler soon expanded his business interests into the growing cattle market, where he made his fortune. He served a brief term in the Iowa State Legislature, before returning to Carlisle in 1866.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

John Herman Bosler (1830-1897)

J. Herman Bosler was born in Silver Spring, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania on December 14, 1830. He was one of eight children of Abraham and Eliza Herman Bosler, an already distinguished county family active in farming, milling, and distilling. He attended the Cumberland Academy in New Kingston at seventeen and then went on to Dickinson College, entering in 1850 into the class of 1854 with his younger brother James Williamson Bosler. Neither brother completed their course, however, with John Herman withdrawing in 1851 to join his father's business.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Trustee - Years of Service
1893-1897

William James Bowdle

William James Bowdle was born the son of Amos Bowdle and his wife in Church Creek, Maryland on October 8, 1834. He entered the Dickinson Grammar School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in September 1849 and then joined the undergraduate class of 1854 a year later. His classmates remember "Billy" as the fun-loving and well-liked center for mischief on the campus. He was elected to the Belles Lettres Society and graduated with his class. He then went on to study medicine, gaining his degree in Baltimore in 1856.

He removed to Kansas with the determination to help the territory become a slave-holding state but returned somewhat disillusioned in 1859 to Baltimore. He gave up his practice and enlisted in the United States Navy as a surgeon in 1861; he served for a time as hospital surgeon at the naval hospital on Hilton Head , South Carolina. Following the war, he returned to Dorchester County and practiced medicine there until his death.

While in Kansas, he had married a Southern women. Nothing further is known of his family life. William James Bowdle died at his home in Church Creek, Maryland on August 1, 1876. He was forty-one years old.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

Nehemiah Fountain (1834-1876)

Nehemiah Fountain was born in Denton, in Caroline County, Maryland in December 1834, one of the five children and the only son of Nehemiah and Lydia Fountain. His father was a shoemaker and a prominent citizen of the small town. The son was educated locally and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1854. Good looking and elegant in dress, he was an excellent and popular student. He was a member of Zeta Psi and was elected to the Union Philosophical Society and graduated near the top of his class. Following graduation, he studied law, passed the Maryland bar, and opened a practice in his home town.

Just before the outbreak of the Civil War, he had moved to Woodstock, Virginia to continue his profession. At the outbreak of war, he enlisted as a second lieutenant in Company F of the 10th Virginia Infantry. His unit fought at the first battle of Manassas (Bull Run), in the Shenandoah Valley campaigns of 1862 near his home, and then in the fighting around Richmond later that year. He was elected captain of his company during the battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. On July 2, 1863, he was captured early in the Battle of Gettysburg and remained a prisoner of war in Maryland, Delaware, and Ohio for almost two years before being exchanged in February 1865.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

John G. Frow (1834-1864)

Birth: July 13, 1834; Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pennsylvania

Death: March 24, 1864 (age 30); Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pennsylvania

Military Service: USA, 1861-63

Unit: U.S. Volunteers

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1854 non-graduate); University of Pennsylvania (Class of 1856)

John Frow was born on July 13, 1834 to James and Jane Ann Frow. He entered Dickinson as a sophomore in 1850 but retired in 1852. As a student he was a member of the Union Philosophical Society as well as the Zeta Psi fraternity. Frow received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1856 and became a physician in Mifflintown.

Frow enlisted in the U.S. Army and became a surgeon with the U.S. Volunteers from 1861 until 1863. He died on March 24, 1864 at Mifflintown.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

George Tankard Garrison (1835-1889)

George Tankard Garrison was born the son of James R. Garrison and Susan P. Tankard Garrison in Accomac County on Virginia's "eastern shore" on January 14, 1835. He enrolled at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1854. A popular student, he was a member of the notorious Zeta Psi fraternity forced to disband in 1853. He walked with a limp since childhood and used a cane. He graduated with his class and entered the University of Virginia Law School and graduated there in 1857.

He opened a practice in his home county but on the outbreak of the Civil War enlisted in the Confederate armed forces as a private, despite his disability. His main service to his home state during the war came as a legislator, though, since he was elected to the house of delegates and served there between 1861 and 1863. He then was a member of the state senate from 1863 to the end of the war. Just after the war, from May 1865, he briefly represented Captain Richard B. Winder, accused and imprisoned for war crimes at Andersonville Prison. In the elevated atmosphere following Lincoln's murder and the revelations over the treatment of Union prisoners in Confederate hands, Garrison himself was in fact arrested and imprisoned for a short time as he represented Winder.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

Otis Gibson (1826-1889)

Otis Gibson was born in Moira, New York in 1825. In September 1850, he entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1854. A big man, while at the College he was elected to the Belles Lettres Society and fell under the influence of Professor Erastus Wentworth, a devout Methodist and chair of Natural Philosophy. Following his graduation with his class in July 1854 he determined to accompany Wentworth on the mission to China he was leading. Gibson, after preaching in Carlisle for the last time two weeks before, sailed for Foochow in China on April 3, 1855.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Honorary Degree - Year
1877

Ferdinand James Samuel Gorgas (1835-1914)

Ferdinand Gorgas was born in Winchester, Virginia to John DeLancy and Mary Ann Gorgas on July 27, 1835. He prepared for his undergraduate years at the Dickinson College Grammar School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and then entered the college proper with the class of 1854 in the autumn of 1850. Gorgas was elected to the Belles Lettres Society and graduated with his class. Following commencement, he entered the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, earning his D.D.S. in 1855.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

John Fletcher Hurst (1834-1903)

John Fletcher Hurst was born near Salem, Maryland on August 17, 1834, the only son and second child of Elijah and Ann Catherine Colston Hurst. His father was a relatively prosperous slave holding farmer and local magistrate who was active in the Methodist Church. His mother died at thirty-four in 1841, when John was seven years old. He was educated at home, then at the local common school and the nearby Cambridge Academy. He saw President Jesse Peck of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania preach near his home and was invited to attend the College in the fall. He did so, entering in September 1850 with the thirty-six member class of 1854. He became a member of the Union Philosophical Society almost immediately and, though not a great orator, later served in most of its executive offices. Already a serious and devout young man, "Johnnie Hurst" was already publishing small writings in various religious magazines before the end of his freshman year, and soon gained a reputation for gentle dignity and hard work. He graduated with twenty others of his class, not with honors but in the "First Section."

Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Honorary Degree - Year
1866; 1880
Faculty - Years of Service
1889-1891
Trustee - Years of Service
1888-1891

John Peach (1835-1925)

John Peach was born in the family home "Ash Grove" near Mitchellville, in Prince George's County, Maryland on April 18, 1835, the son of Samuel and Caroline Hamilton Peach. He prepared at a private school nearby and entered the class of 1854 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1852. He was the youngest in the class but a fine student and a member of the Belle Lettres Society. He graduated with his class and enrolled at the University of Maryland Medical School, earning his M.D. in 1858.

He returned to Mitchellville and built a large and successful practice that he attended continuously for almost forty years. After his retirement, he turned to farming at his home, "Forest Place," adjoining "Ash Grove."

John Peach had married Bettie Howe Wellford of Culpepper, Virginia on February 27, 1870. The couple had eight children; five sons and three daughters. John Peach died after a lingering illness in early December 1925 and was buried at the Mount Oak Cemetery in Mitchellville. He was ninety years old.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

James Fowler Rusling (1834-1918)

Birth:  April 14, 1834; Washington,Warren County, New Jersey

Death:  April 1, 1918 (age 83); Trenton, New Jersey

Military Service: USA, 1861-67

Unit: 5th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry, 2nd Division of III Corps, Volunteer Army, 3rd Corps Quartermaster

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1854)

James Fowler Rusling was the fifth of the seven children born to Geishom and Eliza Hankinson Rusling. He was prepared at the Pennington School and entered Dickinson College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1852, joining the class of 1854. While there he studied the natural sciences and was a member of the Union Philosophical Society. He graduated with his class and immediately took up a teaching post at the Dickinson Williamsport Seminary, where he taught until 1857. He was admitted that year to the Pennsylvania bar and to the New Jersey bar in 1859 when he set up practice in Trenton.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Honorary Degree - Year
1890
Trustee - Years of Service
1861-1883; 1904-1918

Joseph Benton Stayman (1832-1901)

Joseph B. Stayman was born on July 18, 1832 in Hampden Township, Pennsylvania to Christian and Eliza Stayman. His father served for thirty-one years as a trustee of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The younger Stayman attended the preparatory school there and then entered the college proper in 1850 with the class of 1854. He withdrew before graduating and went into business in nearby Mechanicsburg.

Stayman maintained his business career until his retirement. He left it only to enlist very briefly as a private in the Pennsylvania Militia in a company his father raised during the September 1862 emergency during the Civil War. His brother Milton, who also attended Dickinson College with the class of 1856, joined with him in this same unit.

Stayman married Mary A. Shelley of Shiremanstown, Pennsylvania, and the couple had three sons and a daughter. One of these sons, Joseph Webster Stayman, graduated from Dickinson with the class of 1898. Joseph Benton Stayman died on July 14, 1901. He was four days short of his sixty-ninth birthday.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

David Harrison Walton (1830-1876)

David Harrison Walton was born on October 21, 1830 in Shenandoah County, Virginia, near the town of Woodstock. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and graduated with his class in the early summer of 1854. He was a superior student and a member of the Union Philosophical Society. Following his undergraduate years, he studied law in Lexington, Virginia.

He practiced law, and when the Civil War broke out he helped raise a company in his home county that became Company K of the 33rd Virginia Infantry, nicknamed the "Shenandoah Sharpshooters," and was commissioned as its first commander. The unit became a part of the Stonewall Brigade that fought famously at the first Battle of Bull Run (Manassas). In June 1862, with the regiment and brigade suffering some discipline and leadership problems, Walton was reduced to the ranks of the 33rd. He fought as an enlisted man and was wounded at the second encounter at Bull Run (Manassas) in August 1862 and was soon restored to the rank of lieutenant before the unit was engaged at Antietam (Sharpsburg) in September 1862. He continued with the 33rd and was wounded in action at Cedar Creek in October 1864.

Following the war, he returned to law practice in Woodstock. David Harrison Walton died in his hometown on July 7, 1876 and was buried in the Massanutten Cemetery in Woodstock. He was forty-five years old.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year