Class of 1857

Gustavus C. Bird was born in West River, Maryland on January 4, 1839 to Benjamin Lee and Emily Eversfield Duvall Bird. His father was a prominent physician in the county. Bird entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1857. He was a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity and was elected to the Belles Lettres Society. After graduation in the summer of 1857, Bird attended theological seminary in Alexandria, Virginia.

After his ordination, Bird took up a pastorate in Centreville, Maryland. He moved on to Grace Church in Honesdale, Pennsylvania and then was assistant rector at the Emmanuel Church in Baltimore. In 1872 Bird settled as the rector of St. Martin's Protestant Episcopal Church in Marcus Hook on the Delaware River, which is in the extreme south-eastern corner of Pennsylvania. He served there for twenty-seven years.

Bird married Anna Louisa Hull of New York and the couple had five children between 1867 and 1882. In March 1899, Reverend Bird suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by troubles in the parish. His debilitation was severe enough for him to resign, to be placed in a sanitarium in nearby Lindwood, and his wife and family to move to Philadelphia. Gustavus Claggett Bird died in the Lindwood institution on April 5, 1899. He was sixty.

Birth: August 1, 1837; Fairfax Court House, Virginia

Death: January 5, 1905 (age 68); Washington, D. C

Military Service: CSA, 1861-65

Unit: 3rd Virginia Cavalry; Secret Service

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1857)

Thomas Conrad was born on August 1, 1837 in Fairfax Court House, Virginia, to Nelson and Lavinia Thomas Conrad. He attended the Fairfax Academy before enrolling in Dickinson College in 1853. While at Dickinson, Conrad was a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity, and served as secretary and then president of the Belles Lettres Literary Society. He also formed an enduring friendship with a fellow classmate, Daniel Mountjoy Cloud. Conrad graduated with the class of 1857. From 1857 until 1861 Conrad served as principal of the Georgetown Institute in Washington, D. C. For his efforts, he was awarded a master’s degree from Dickinson in 1860.

Conrad enlisted as a chaplain in the 3rd Virginia Cavalry in 1861, and eventually attained the rank of captain. After three years of service, he accepted a position in the Confederate Secret Service. He was responsible for operating the successful “Doctor’s Line,” that supplied reliable intelligence to Richmond. With the aid of his friend Daniel Cloud, Conrad organized a plot to abduct President Lincoln, but their plans fell through. After Lincoln’s assassination, Conrad was briefly incarcerated.

Birth: November 3, 1834; Carlisle, Pennsylvania

Death: January 20, 1899 (age 64);  Emporia, Kansas

 Military Service: USA, 1861-65

 Unit:  Company A, 129th Illinois Infantry

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1857)

Joseph Franklin Culver was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on November 3, 1834. He grew up in the town and enrolled in the local Dickinson College with the class of 1857. A popular and involved student, he was elected to the Belles Lettres Society at the college. He withdrew before graduating in order to study law with William J. Shearer of Carlisle. He also studied at the Iron City Commercial College for a time, but then left Pennsylvania for Ohio soon after. He continued his studies in Wooster, Ohio for several years and taught school in Burbank, Ohio before settling in Pontiac, Illinois.

John Hays was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on February 2, 1837 the youngest of two sons and a daughter of John and Eleanor Blaine Hays. On both sides of his family, the young John Hays was descended from old and highly respected central Pennsylvania stock. He was educated in the common schools of Carlisle and at the Plainfield Academy and entered Dickinson College in 1852. After a time away from his studies, he re-entered the College in 1854 and joined the class of 1857. He was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma and was elected to the Belle Lettres Society. Following graduation with his class, he entered law studies in Carlisle with Robert Henderson.

He was called to the Cumberland County bar in August 1859 and entered practice locally. In August 1862, he was commissioned a second lieutenant and then first lieutenant in the newly raised Company A of the 130th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers. The 130th was one of the undrilled and untrained new regiments thrown into the action that culminated in the battle of Antietam. The unit later fought with heavy losses in the classes at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville where Hays, now adjutant of the regiment, was wounded in the right shoulder by a musket ball. He also served as adjutant to General William Hays for a time at brigade headquarters of the 2nd Brigade of the Third Division. He mustered out with his regiment on May 21, 1863 and returned to Carlisle, entering Henderson's law firm.

Richard Watson Humphriss was born to Joshua and Ann Humphriss in Sudlersville, Maryland on May 27, 1836. He prepared for college at the Hyatt Academy and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in the fall of 1854 with the class of 1857. He was elected to the Union Philosophical Society but withdrew from the College after one year to take a position as the principal of the grammar school in Pottsdown, Pennsylvania. He also taught at the Williamsport Dickinson Seminary. He then completed studies at the Methodist Episcopal Biblical Institute in Concord, New Hampshire and entered the Philadelphia Conference of the Methodist Church as a clergyman.

He transferred to the New Hampshire Conference in 1861 and was pastor at the Wesley Church in Haverhill, Massachusetts in 1863. He then moved on to the Providence Conference and the County Street Chucrch in New Bedford. He finally setttled into the Philadelphia Conference structure in 1868 and the served the congregations of Trinity Church, Christ Church, St John's, Green Street, Grace Church, and several others in a remarkable career in the city. In addition to this, he was a pastor in Reading and Chester, Pennsylvania and was for a time chaplain to the Pennsylvania Military College in West Chester outside the city of Philadelphia. He was pastor of the Eighteenth Street Church in the city from 1902 untill his retirement in 1905.

Jacob A. Kiester was born in Mount Pleasant in south western Pennsylvania on April 29, 1832. Having prepared for college in the local common schools and at the nearby Mount Pleasant Academy, he entered Dickinson College with the class of 1857 in 1854. Kiester left the college after just a year, although he did have time for election to the Belles Lettres Society. Soon after, he moved west and was admitted to the bar in Indiana in 1855. Kiester moved on to Wisconsin for some months and then settled in April 1857 in Blue Earth City, Minnesota, the county seat of the newly organized Faribault County.

Soon after arriving in Blue Earth City, Kiester was elected as county surveyor of Faribault County in October 1857. The following year he was chosen as county registrar of deeds. Kiester seemingly made a very early impact on the county since, as soon as January 1859, the county supervisors named a small township in the eastern part of Faribault after him. He later served as a Republican representative to the state legislature in 1865, county attorney for 1866-67, and as United States internal revenue assessor in 1868. Kiester was named as a probate judge in 1869 and served in that post for more than twenty years before he was elected as a state senator in 1891, serving there as a Republican until 1895.