Class of 1859

James Burns Belford was born in Lewistown, Pennsylvania on September 28, 1837, the son of Samuel and Eliza Belford. He was a cousin of Joseph McCrum Belford, class of 1871, who served a congressman from New York State. He prepared at Lewistown High School and entered Dickinson College in 1855. He retired from his class in 1857 though not before he had been elected to the Belles Lettres Society. He went on immediately to study law and was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1859.

William Emory Fisk Deal was born on March 8, 1840 in Calvert County, Maryland to William Grove and Janetta Suttan Deal. He prepared for his undergraduate years at the West River Classical School and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1855 with the class of 1859. He was a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity and was elected as a member of the Belles Lettres Society.

Following graduation in the early summer of 1859, Deal traveled to California where he taught until 1863. He then studied law and embarked on a lucrative career in Virginia City, Nevada. He qualified to argue before the state supreme court in 1865. Deal was a wealthy man by October 1875, when he lost his expensive new home in an exclusive part of town in the great Virginia City Fire. He was a presidential elector in the 1880 election, state commissioner for the care of the insane from 1881 to 1885, and a regent of the University of Nevada between 1884 and 1903. Deal argued a case before the United States Supreme Court with his old Dickinson fraternity brother Horatio Collins King in 1894. After 1903, Deal moved to San Francisco where, in 1905 and 1906, he argued before the California Supreme Court on behalf of the Ophir Silver Mining Company of Virginia City.

In May 1875, Deal married Roberta Griffith of Ann Arundel County, Maryland. The couple had three daughters and a son. W. E. F. Deal died in September 1924. He was eighty-four years old.

Birth: June 29, 1837; Upper Tract, Pendleton County, West Virginia

Death: December 3, 1861 (age 24); Allegheny Mountain

 Military Service: CSA, 1861

 Unit: 25th Infantry Regiment Virginia

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1859)

Zebulon Dyer while attending Dickinson was a member of the Union Philosophical Society and Phi Kappa Sigma; he received his bachelor of arts degree in 1859. Until the outbreak of the Civil War, he spent the next two years teaching and studying law.

Dyer enlisted as a Sergeant in Company H, 25th Infantry Regiment Virginia of the Confederate States Army.  He died from wounds at the Allegheny Mountain on December 13, 1861. He was twenty-four years old.

Wilbur F. Massey was born to James A. and Anne Parker Massey on September 30, 1839 in Onancock, Virginia. He began his studies at Washington College in Maryland and in 1857 entered the Dickinson College class of 1859. Massey was elected to the Belles Lettres Society before leaving Dickinson after one year. The following year, he became engaged in railway construction work on the Northern Missouri Railroad in Missouri and Iowa.

George W. Mitchell was born in Perry Valley, Perry County, Pennsylvania to William and Alice McBlair Mitchell. He grew up in Juniata Township, attending school there and at the Bloomfield Academy. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1859 and became a member of the Belles Lettres Society, but left Dickinson to study medicine with Dr. Robert C. Brown of Newport, Pennsylvania. Mitchell subsequently graduated from the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in March 1860.

Mitchell returned to Newport to practice and then moved farther west in the county to set up in Andersonburg. He enlisted on February 14, 1863 as assistant surgeon in the 119th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, "The Gray Reserves," then heavily involved with the campaigns of the Army of the Potomac. As one of two or three trained medical personnel in the regiment, Mitchell saw heavy duty when his regiment fought at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and in the Shenandoah Campaign. He mustered out with the 119th on June 19, 1865 and returned to his practice in Andersonburg. Mitchell worked there as a family physician until 1903, when he joined his family in Alliance, Nebraska where they had settled.

Birth: 1839; New Berlin, Union, Pennsylvania

Death: May 13, 1880 (age 38); Naval Hospital, Washington D.C.

Military Service: USA, 1862

Unit: 142nd PA Infantry

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1859 non-graduate); University of Lewisburg(Bucknell University), B.A, (Class of 1862)

The son of a Carlisle minister, Thomas Orwig entered the Dickinson College Grammar School at the age of 16 on September 12, 1855 where he prepared for two years before entering the College in 1855 as a member of the class of 1859. Although Orwig left Dickinson after his sophomore year when his family moved to New Berlin, Pennsylvania, while at the College he was a member of the Belles Lettres Literary Society.

Orwig received his bachelor of arts degree from the University of Lewisburg(Bucknell University) in 1862 and then joined the Union army, rising to the rank of sergeant. He died later that year in a naval hospital in Washington, D.C.

James J. Patterson was born in Philadelphia on June 22, 1838, the son of John and Ellen Van Dyke Patterson. He grew up in rural Juniata County near Academia where his family had taken up farming and local business. He attended local schools and the Tuscarora Academy, the first secondary school in the county, a Presbyterian institution in Academia for which his father had donated land and money. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in September, 1856 with the class of 1859, enrolling in the classical course. While at the College, he was an early member of Phi Kappa Sigma and active in the Belles Lettres Society. Following graduation with his class, he took up the post of principal of Boalsburg Academy in Centre County, Pennsylvania.

J. A. V. Pue was born in Howard County, Maryland to Arthur and Sallie Dorsey Pue on July 20, 1841. He prepared for his undergraduate career at the Dickinson Grammar School and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1855 with the class of 1859. He was elected as a member of the Belles Lettres Society and graduated with his class in the early summer of 1859.

Pue studied law, but with the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined his militia cavalry unit when it rode south in May 14, 1861 and enlisted in the Confederate Army as the First Maryland Cavalry. The following day, Pue was elected as third lieutenant of Company A and was promoted to second lieutenant a year later. He was wounded at Greenland Gap, Virginia in April 1863, but this did not prevent him from joining the invasion of Pennsylvania in June. The First Maryland was attached to Fitzhugh Lee's Brigade at the time, and Pue almost certainly would have returned to Carlisle and the grounds of Dickinson College during Lee's late June occupation of the town. Pue was captured on August 7, 1864, probably at Moorefield, West Virginia, when the First was taken by surprise and suffered very heavy casualties. Following the end of the war, he moved to Bandera County, Texas with several members of his family, where he practiced law and entered the farming and stock-raising business. He also served as judge of the Bandera County Court.

Duke Slavens was born in Harrodsburg, Kentucky on August 5, 1840. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1859. As a student, Slavens became a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity and was elected to the Union Philosophical Society. He graduated with his class.

Slavens returned to Kentucky and began preaching in the Methodist Episcopal Church while still nineteen. He served as a pastor in Illinois and Arkansas, then moved west in 1886 to join the Nebraska Conference. There, Slavens ministered at LaSalle St. Beatrice, Palmyra, Bennet, Rising City, and Adam. He was also the presiding elder of the York District in the conference and a member of the conference's Standing Committee on Freedman's Aid and Southern Education.

Slavens married Mary Taylor in 1861, and the couple had six children. He retired in 1903 and took up residence in Odell, Nebraska. In January 1920, Slavens and his wife joined their married daughter in the milder climate of Bay City, Texas. Suffering badly from rheumatism, Duke Slavens died in Bay City on September 14, 1920. He was eighty years old.

Adam C. Snyder was born in Crab Bottom in Highland County, Virginia on March 26, 1834 to John and Elizabeth Halderman Snyder. He prepared for undergraduate studies at the Tuscarora Academy in Juniata County, Pennsylvania and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in September 1856 as a member of the class of 1859. Snyder enrolled at Dickinson with James J. Patterson, whose father had helped found Tuscarora. While at the College, Snyder was elected to the Belles Lettres Society, but he transferred to Washington College in Lexington, Virginia in 1857 to complete his education. Snyder studied law under Judge J. W. Brokenbough in Lexington, Virginia and was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1859. He opened a practice in Lewisburg, Virginia soon after.

David F. Woods was born in Dickinson Township, Pennsylvania on September 16, 1837, the son of Richard and Mary Jane Sterrett Woods. He was educated in local schools but prepared for higher education in an academy connected with his uncle, the Reverend David Sterrett Woods, in present day Juniata County. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, near his birthplace, in 1856 as a sophomore with the class of 1859. He graduated with his class and, for a time, went to Huntington, Pennsylvania to work in the banking house of Bell, Garretson, and Company. He wearied of this career choice quickly and his family funded his study of medicine in Philadelphia, some of it with fellow Dickinsonian and Cumberland County native Dr. R.A.F. Penrose. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a medical doctorate in 1862.

Woods was a resident at the Blockley Hospital for a year and then at the Episcopal Hospital in 1864. He opened his own practice on South Thirteenth Street in Philadelphia in the spring of 1865. He also assisted in instruction with the University of Pennsylvania medical school, though he was forced to give up much of this work when his practice became so successful and popular that he had to move to North Fifteenth Street. In 1872, he gave up teaching completely. He did continue with visiting duties at the Episcopal Hospital and, for a long period, at the Presbyterian Hospital in the city.

George Henry Zimmerman was born to Joshua and Elizabeth Zimmerman on September 20, 1838 in Baltimore County, Maryland. He prepared for undergraduate studies at Washington College in Maryland and then entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1859. While at the College he became a member of Phi Kappa Sigman fraternity and was elected to the Belles Lettres Society. Following graduation in the early summer of 1859, he studied as a Methodist clergyman and was accepted as a member of the Baltimore Conference.

He filled various pastorates, including Moorefield, West Virginia between 1876 and 1879, at Easton, Maryland from 1879 to 1882, in Woodstock, Virginia 1886-1888, West River, Maryland 1888-1892, and Hyattsville, Maryland 1892-94. He was a presiding elder over the Roanoke District between 1882 and 1886 and over the Moorefield District between 1894 and 1898. In 1898 he took up the editorship of the Christian Advocate, shortly before his death.

In October 1866, he had married Henrietta Ann Rowe of Charles County, Maryland and the couple had three sons. George Henry Zimmerman died on November 3, 1898. He was sixty years old.