Class of 1858

Joseph Benson Akers was born on February 3, 1829 in Akersville, Brush Creek Township in Fulton County, Pennsylvania. He was the eldest son of carding mill owner Israel Akers and his wife, Elizabeth Lewis Akers. The younger Akers was educated locally, taught Sunday School, and then entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1858. He became a member of the Belles Lettres Society and, following graduation with his class, studied to become a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Akers became a pastor under the East Baltimore Conference in 1858 and served in various churches until 1868, when he moved to the new Central Pennsylvania Conference. There he served as pastor in Howard Township in Centre County and was principal for a short while at the Catawissa Seminary. Akers was also pastor and schoolteacher at Hyner in Centre County and at Whitehaven in Luzerne County. He retired in 1889.

In February 1863, Akers married Henrietta Gallagher. The couple had a son who died in infancy and a daughter, Elizabeth. His first wife died and in May 1874, Akers married Lydia A. Gibbony. This second union produced a son, Herbert, in 1875. Joseph Benson Akers died of a stroke one week after his retirement in Bellwood, Pennsylvania on October 27, 1889. He was sixty years old.

Robert N. Baer was born on April 12, 1834 in Baltimore, Maryland. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1858, was elected to the Union Philosophical Society, and graduated with his class. Following this he studied as a clergyman in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

During his career, Baer served in various capacities within the Baltimore Conference from 1861 to 1888. Initially, he was principal of Salisbury Academy in Maryland for three years beginning in 1858. Baer also served in Washington, D.C. as pastor of the Metropolitan Methodist Episcopal Church, and he officiated at Memorial Day services in the Congressional Cemetery there in 1881. He finished his career in the Conference at the Fayette Street Church in Baltimore. Dickinson College awarded Baer an honorary doctor of divinity degree in 1884.

His family circumstances are unknown at this time. On September 21, 1888, Robert Newton Baer died of typhoid in his Fayette Street parsonage after a short illness. He was fifty-four years old.

James Iverson Boswell was born in Philadelphia on November 3, 1837. He attended the central high school in that city and enrolled at Genesee College in New York in 1856. A year later, Boswell enrolled at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as a junior. In the year he was at the College, he was elected to the Belles Lettres Society. Boswell graduated with his class in the early summer of 1858.

Boswell then attended the Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1861 and was later ordained as a Methodist minister. As a member of the Newark Conference, he had a long career as pastor at a string of New Jersey churches located in the following towns: Westfield, Palisade, Mount Hermon, Somerville, Elizabeth (Fulton Street), Newark (Trinity), Newtown, Montclair, Paterson (Cross Street), Jersey City (West Side Avenue), Nyack, Madison, South Orange, Englewood, and Verona. Boswell retired from this particularly mobile ministry of more than four decades in 1903.

In May 1863, Boswell married Cynthia Copeland. James Iverson Boswell died in Ocean Grove, New Jersey on November 30, 1926. He was three weeks past his eighty-ninth birthday.

Joseph E. Broadwater was born in Accomac County, Virginia to David and Mary Ann White Broadwater on April 29, 1837. He prepared for college at academies in Drummondville, Virginia and Bel-Air, Maryland before entering Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1854. Broadwater was elected to the Belles Lettres Society and graduated with his class in July 1858. He then studied medicine at the University of Maryland and was awarded the M.D. there in 1860.

Broadwater returned home to Virginia's Eastern Shore and took up practice in Temperanceville, Virginia. He spent the remainder of his life there as a family physician. Broadwater was also elected to a term in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1889, and he served as a member of the school board for Accomac County.

Samuel Cushman Caldwell was born on April 10, 1836 in the west end of Old West at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. His father, science professor Merritt Caldwell, and his mother had their home on the first and second floors of the college building. Professor Caldwell was forced to resign from his position at Dickinson in March 1848 due to poor health. He died soon after in Portland, Maine. There, the younger Caldwell lived with family, preparing at the Hebron Academy for college. In 1855, Samuel Caldwell returned as a student to Dickinson College, where he was elected to the Union Philosophical Society and graduated with his class in 1858. Caldwell taught Greek and Latin in Maryland and at the Rock River Seminary in Mount Morris, Illinois. He then returned to Portland, Maine to study law. Caldwell was admitted to the bar there in 1863, but took up journalism instead. He worked for The Methodist as assistant editor to George R. Crooks, one of his father's former students of the Dickinson class of 1840. 

Thomas Care was born at St. Mary's in Chester County, Pennsylvania on July 10, 1832. He was prepared at the Williamsport Seminary and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle with the class of 1858. He was elected to the Union Philosophical Society, was an active debater, and served as treasurer of the society for a time. He graduated with his class in the early summer of 1858 and determined on a career in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

From 1859 to 1863, Care was a pastor and circuit rider with the East Baltimore Conference, riding for a time in 1859 in Huntingdon County. He then took a post in 1863 as instructor of natural science at his old school, the Williamsport Seminary, which he held for a year. In late 1863, he was again a missionary and circuit preacher, this time in Elk County, Pennsylvania.

No information is available at this time on his family situation. Thomas Care died in Harrisburg on March 18, 1864. He was thirty-two years old.

Birth: December 31, 1836

 Death: June 22, 1864 (age 28); Richmond, Virginia; Hollywood Cemetery

 Military Service: CSA, 1861-64

 Unit: Company K, Second Division

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1858 non-graduate)

Rudolphus Cecil was prepared at the Dickinson Grammar School for the year 1853-1854 and entered the College proper the following year with the class of 1858. Cecil joined the Belles Lettres Society, but eventually withdrew from the College. He moved to Anne Arundel County, Maryland and became a farmer in Millersville where he married Elizabeth Gosnell in January of 1861 with whom he has one son, William Edwin Cecil.

Cecil enlisted in the Maryland unit that eventually became Company K, First Virginia Cavalry of the Confederate States Army at Romney as a private on July 10, 1861. A promotion to 3rd lieutenant came less than a year later on April 23, 1862. Cecil was wounded in the left foot at Kennon’s Landing on May 24, 1864; the foot had to be amputated at a Richmond hospital, but Cecil nevertheless died of his wounds on June 22. He was buried in the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.

Cecil is believed to have been a favorite of General Fitzhugh Lee, as Lee often made special mention of Cecil's bravery in his official reports, remarking on his death that he was "an officer possessing a daring bravery I have rarely seen equaled."

Birth: June 29, 1837; Warren County, Virginia

Death: May 31, 1871 (age 34); Vicksburg, Mississippi

 Military Service: CSA, 1861-65

 Unit: 7th Virginia Cavalry; Secret Service

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1858)

Daniel Cloud was born on June 29, 1837 in Warren County, Virginia. He entered Dickinson College, where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity and the Belles Lettres Literary Society. He graduated with the class of 1858. From 1858 to 1859 Cloud taught at Charlotte Hall, Maryland, and from 1859 to 1860 he taught at Salina, Alabama. In 1860, he accepted a position at the Biblical Institute in Conrad, New Hampshire.

With the start of the Civil War, Cloud returned to Virginia where he joined the 7th Virginia Cavalry under Captain Ashby. After being promoted to captain in 1863, he transferred to the Secret Service of the Confederacy. Under the command of his college roommate, Captain Thomas N. Conrad, Cloud helped to coordinate Confederate spies in Washington, D. C. and the transportation of intelligence to Richmond. At one point Cloud and Conrad planned to abduct President Lincoln, but their plans fell through.

After the war, Cloud became superintendent of public schools in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1865. He was later admitted to the Bar in Vicksburg, where he remained for the rest of his life. Daniel Mountjoy Cloud died on May 31, 1871.

Philip W. Downes was the eldest son of William H. Downes and his wife Annie Hardcastle Downes and was born in Caroline County, Maryland in 1837. When he was ten, his father was elected as a Maryland state delegate. The younger Downes entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he was elected as a member of the Union Philosophical Society and graduated with the class of 1858. Downes studied law in Easton, Maryland and was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1861.

Based on available records, the activities of Downes over the next decade or so are unclear; it is known that he served as Maryland's commissioner of fisheries from 1874 to 1878. Beginning in 1877, successful already in business and his practice, Downes began buying up sections of the Upper Denton, Maryland waterfront on the Choptank River. A few years later, he owned most of the properties south of the Denton Bridge. The operation and later sale of these properties made him a wealthy man. Downes became the first president of the Denton National Bank in 1881 and a director the next year of the newly established Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Denton.

By 1880, Downes had been married to his wife, Annie, for more than a decade and the couple had two children, James, aged ten, and Armand, aged two. He also had gained the title "Colonel" by that point in his career. Philip Downes died in Denton, Maryland in 1895. He was fifty-eight years old.

Robert N. Earhart was born in Blairsville, Pennsylvania on April 9, 1833 to merchant David Earhart and his wife, Catharine Altman Earhart. His father took his large family, of which Robert was the youngest, to Pleasant Valley, Iowa during the 1840s. The younger Earhart received his preparatory education at Alexander College, a Presbyterian institution in Dubuque, Iowa that closed in 1857. He then returned to his native state for his undergraduate degree, enrolling at Dickinson College in Carlisle in the autumn of 1854. Earhart was elected to the Belles Lettres Society and graduated with his class in 1858.

Earhart then attended the B.D. Garrett Biblical Institute in Evanston, Illinois and qualified in 1860 as a clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He returned to his home area in Iowa and joined the Upper Iowa Conference of that church, where he served congregations for the remainder of his active life. His pastorates included churches at Toledo in Tuma County, at Osage in Mitchell County, and at the First Methodist of Manchester in Delaware County. After forty-one years of service to northern Iowa, he retired from the pulpit in 1901.

Birth: May 13, 1834; Frederick County, Maryland

Death: May 12, 1909 (age 74); Waxahachie, Texas

Military Service: CSA, 1861-65

Unit: Company E, 12th Texas Cavalry

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1858); M.A. (Class of 1870)

William H. Getzendaner was born of Swiss parents, Abram and Mary E. Getzendaner, in Frederick County, Maryland on May 13, 1834. He prepared for his undergraduate work at the nearby Frederick Academy, then entered Dickinson College. Getzendaner enrolled at Dickinson in 1855 with the class of 1858. He was elected to the Union Philosophical Society and became a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity. Getzendaner graduated with his class and returned to Frederick to continue the law studies he had begun in his final undergraduate year. Soon after this, he went south and west to Texas.

Birth: June 16, 1837;  Gwinette County, Georgia

Death: April 28, 1874 (age 37); Lawrenceville, Georgia

Military Service: CSA, 1861-65

Unit: Company A, "Prairie Rovers," of the Eighth Texas Cavalry Regiment "Terry's Texas Rangers"

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1858)

Marcus Lafayette Gordon was born in Gwinette County, Georgia on June 16, 1837. He was raised and educated in that county and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1858. While at Dickinson, Gordon was elected to the Belles Lettres Society. He graduated with his class and, after legal studies, was admitted to the bar in Lawrenceville, Georgia in his home county. Shortly after this, Gordon moved west to Waco, Texas, where he opened a law office.

Birth: June 14, 1834; De Kalb County, Georgia

Death:  August 31, 1862 (age 28);  Second Battle of Bull Run

Military Service: CSA, 1861-62

Unit: Company F, 8th Georgia Infantry, Second Division

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1858)

Jennings Hulsey was born on June 14, 1834, in De Kalb County, Georgia. He enrolled at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1858. While at the College he became a member of the Belles Lettres Society and the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity. Often at the center of student pranks, he was one of four men who were suspended for allegedly, and famously, tarring Professor Tiffany’s blackboards; he received punishment but was allowed to return and graduated with his class. After gaining his bachelor of arts degree in 1858, Hulsey returned to Georgia to study law in Atlanta; he later was admitted to the bar.

In 1862 Hulsey entered the Confederate States Army and became a captain in Company F, Eight Georgia Infantry, Second Division. This unit saw some of the heaviest fighting of the early part of the war in Virginia, suffering 208 casualties at the first battle of Bull Run, near Manassas, in July 1861. Jennings Hulsey did not survive the second battle of Bull Run; he was killed in action there on August 31, 1862.

Birth: December 22, 1837; Portland, Maine

Death: November 15, 1918 (age 81);Brooklyn, New York

Military Service: USA, 1861-65

Unit: Army of the Potomac, First Cavalry Division of the Army of the Shenandoah

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1858); Trustee, 1896-1918

John H. Lease was born in Newport, Pennsylvania to John and Christina Lease on July 5, 1832. He prepared for college at the Pennington School in New Jersey, then entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, just thirty miles from his home. Lease graduated with his class in the early summer of 1858 and took up studies in the Methodist faith.

Lease also taught, in addition to studying religion. In 1862, he was professor and principal of a small college called Union Seminary in New Berlin, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1856, the school later became Central Pennsylvania College and merged with Albright College in 1902. Lease moved on in 1864 to become a professor at the new Pennsylvania Agricultural College in Centre County, later Pennsylvania State University. He worked there briefly before teaching for five years at North Western College in Illinois between 1865 and 1870. Lease then turned his attentions to preaching. In 1872 he joined the St. Louis Conference of the Methodist Church and moved on to the Cincinnati Conference in 1875. Lease served for some years as the pastor of a church in Wilmington, Ohio and another in Bethany. He remained in the state for the remainder of his days. In 1884, Lease received an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Bucknell University.

Benjamin Lippincott was born the elder son of Crispin Lippincott and his first wife, Mary Ann Wilkins Lippincott, in Haddonfield, New Jersey on July 22, 1827. He prepared for college at the nearby Methodist-affiliated Pennington School. In 1855, he entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania along with his half-brother Joshua Allan Lippincott. Benjamin was elected as a member of the Belles Lettres Society and graduated with his class in 1858. He then studied to become a Methodist clergyman.

Soon after graduation, Lippincott served as the principal of the Cumberland Institute in nearby Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He then moved to the West, where in 1860 he became head of the growing Puget Sound Wesleyan Institute in Olympia, Washington. Founded by local Methodists, the school was well-supported and was on the verge of being funded as a university when the Civil War halted proceedings. The territorial legislature instead elected Lippincott the superintendent of public schools for the entire territory. His later career is largely undocumented by available records. It is known that Lippincott returned to New Jersey by the end of his life. He also served on the Dickinson College board of trustees, once again along with his brother, for more than a decade beginning in 1891.

Joshua A. Lippincott was born in Burlington County, New Jersey on January 31, 1835 to Crispin and Elizabeth Garwood Lippincott. He prepared for college at the Pennington Seminary and enrolled at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1855, along with his older half-brother, Benjamin Crispin Lippincott. While at the college, Joshua Lippincott was elected to the Belles Lettres Society. He graduated with his class and his brother in the early summer of 1858.

Lippincott immediately took up a post at his old school and remained at Pennington Seminary teaching mathematics and German until 1862. At that time, he became a high school principal and superintendent of schools in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Lippincott then moved on to Trenton, New Jersey in 1865 to become principal of the boy's section of the New Jersey State Model School there. He moved again in 1869 to teach school in Baltimore, Maryland for three years.

Birth: April 13, 1840; Loudoun County, Virginia

Death: June 27, 1862 (age 22);  Battle of Gaines Mill

Military Service: CSA, 1861-62

Unit: Company D, 8th Virginia Infantry

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1858 non-graduate)

Leven W. Luckett hailed from Loudoun County, Virginia. He entered Dickinson as a sophomore in the fall of 1855. He stayed only one year, however, and does not appear in the catalogue for 1856. While a student, Luckett was a member of the Belles Lettres Literary Society. Evidence indicates that he subsequently attended the University of Virginia.

Luckett entered the Confederate States Army, most likely in the early summer of 1861. He served as a private in Company D, 8th Virginia Infantry. He was wounded on June 27, 1862 at the Battle of Gaines Mill, Virginia and died two days later.

John Emory McClintock was born on September 19, 1840 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the son of John McClintock and Caroline Augusta Wakeman. His father, a devoted clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church, taught mathematics, Greek, and Latin at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. At the age of 14, young Emory (he dropped "John" to distinguish himself from his father) enrolled in the College as a freshman with a concentration in mathematics. He withdrew in 1856 to study at Yale, yet he ultimately received his degree from Columbia University in 1859. He was immediately offered a position as a mathematics tutor at that institution, but the job was short-lived as Emory wanted to further his own education. To that end, he studied chemistry in Paris and London until February, 1862, and also spent a semester in laboratory training at the University of Göttingen, Germany in 1861.

Birth: October 11, 1837; Lewisburg, Virginia (now West Virginia)

Death: June 14, 1863 (age 25); Richmond, Virginia

Military Service: USA, 1861-63

Unit: 59thVirginia Infantry

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1858)

Samuel M. McPherson was born to state legislator and Virginia militia officer Colonel Joel McPherson and his wife Amanda McClung McPherson. He was the fourth child of eight. McPherson entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was elected to the Union Philosophical Society there, and graduated with his class in the early summer of 1858.

McPherson studied medicine in Philadelphia and earned his medical degree. Early in the Civil War he became surgeon of the Fifty-ninth Virginia Infantry and a well-known and respected medical officer under General Henry A. Wise.

On June 14, 1863, Samuel McClung McPherson died in the service of the Confederate States near Richmond, Virginia.

Birth: December 25, 1836; Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania

Death: October 8, 1900 (age 53); Second Battle of Bull Run

Military Service: USA, 1861-1900

Unit: Regular Army's 4th Artillery

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1858); Jefferson Medical College, M.D.

Joseph P. Wright, a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he was elected to the Union Philosophical Society and graduated with the class of 1858 in July of that year. Wright then moved on to study medicine at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.

When the Civil War broke out, Wright enlisted in May 1861 as an assistant surgeon with the rank of first lieutenant. He served with the regular army's Fourth Artillery in Ohio during the remainder of that year. Wright then became medical purveyor for the Department of the Ohio on the staffs of Generals McClellan and Rosencrans. In July 1862, he moved to General Grant's headquarters with the Army of Tennessee, acting as chief of the medical purveyor's department until June 1863. At that time, he became the officer in charge of the army's general hospital in Memphis. Wright was then named assistant medical director for the Army of the Cumberland in March 1864. He served in that capacity until the surrender, when Wright resumed his post as head of the Memphis hospital, a position he held until February 1866.