Joseph McCrum Belford (1852-1917)

Joseph McCrum Belford was born in Mifflintown in Pennsylvania on August 5, 1852 the son of David and Anna Belford. He prepared at the Dickinson Seminary in Williamsport and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1868. While at the College he became a member of Phi Kappa Psi and was active in the Belle Lettres Society. He graduated with his class in 1871.

Belford taught at the Franklinville and Riverhead Academies on Long Island in New York for a time but then studied law and was admitted to the New York bar in 1889 and began a practice in Riverhead. He also became active in politics in Suffolk County and served secretary and chairman of the county Republican committee. This led to his election to the Fifty-fifth Congress from the first district of New York between March 4, 1897 and March 3, 1899. He was was not a candidate for renomination in 1898 although he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention at Philadelphia in 1900. He returned to his practice and also became involved in banking. He served from 1904 to 1910 as surrogate of Suffolk County.

A cousin of James Burns Belford, class of 1859, who also served in Congress, he married Inez Hawkins of Jamesport, New York in December, 1892. The couple had one son, Donald Hawkins Belford. Joseph McCrum Belford collapsed and died suddenly in Grand Central Station, New York City on May 3, 1917 and was buried in Riverhead Cemetery.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

William Alexander Himes (1851-1907)

William Alexander Himes was born in New Oxford, Pennsylvania on November 27, 1851 the son of William and Magdalen Lanius Himes and the younger brother of Charles Francis Himes. He went to local schools first and then to Nazareth Hall in Nazareth, Pennsylvania from where be began his undergraduate education at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. After two years at Moravian, he entered the junior class at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania where his older brother was teaching science. He was elected to the Belles Lettres Society and followed family tradition in joining the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity before graduating in 1871. Also, like his brother, he went west after graduation to make his fortune in real estate, this time in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He soon returned and entered his father's business in New Oxford.

Himes opened a retail lumber and coal business in New Oxford in 1878 and took up the management of several farms in the area. He also involved himself in other civic and commercial roles in the town, becoming a director of the York Trust Company and the Adams County Telephone Company. He served as a city council member and oversaw the construction of the New Oxford water works. He worked on the borough school board and was active in local Republican politics.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year