Alumnus/Alumna

John F. Mohler was born on a farm near Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania on October 30, 1864, one five children of Samuel and Elizabeth Williams Mohler. He was educated at the local common schools where he also assisted with teaching in order to help fund his higher education. He entered Dickinson College in nearby Carlisle in December 1883 and graduated with the class of 1887 as its valedictorian. While at the College he became one of the first students elected to the new chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and was active in the Belle Lettres Society.

Following his graduation, Mohler taught mathematics and science for three years at the Wilmington Conference Academy in Dover, Delaware, then, from 1890 to 1894, at the Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. He then broke from his career to enroll in a Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins University, serving also as an assistant in astronomy and a fellow in physics. With his doctorate secured, Mohler returned to Dickinson College in 1896 as professor of physics. There he remained for the rest of his career becoming a respected author in the sciences and a remarkably admired teacher. The Dickinson Scientific Club, founded in 1867, was renamed the Mohler Society in his honor at his retirement and freshmen prizes in physics carry his name to this day.

Johnston Moore was born on September 8, 1809 at Mooredale in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania the only survivor of two sons of James and Nancy Johnston Moore. The Moore family was one of the oldest and largest landed proprietors in the county, a forebearer purchasing several thousand acres on the Yellow Breeches Creek from John Penn in 1780. Johnson's parents both died at an early age and he lived with an aunt near Greencastle and then with his guardian, Andrew Carothers, in Carlisle while he attended Dickinson College. He entered in 1825 with the class of 1829 but withdrew in 1827 when eighteen years years old. According to minutes of faculty meetings, however, Moore continued to socialize with his friends on the campus across High Street; in August 1828 he was officially expelled and banned from the campus after abusing College officers and generally causing a nuisance. Eventually, he took control of his family holdings and embarked on a long career of land management in the county. 

James Henry Morgan was born on a farm near Concord in southern Delaware on January 21, 1857. He prepared at Rugby Academy and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in September 1874 as one of a freshman class of sixteen students. He elected to take the Scientific Course, became a leading debater with the Union Philosophical Society, and sat on the editorial board of the Dickinsonian. He won the Pierson Gold Medal for Oratory as a junior and gave the Latin Salutory at his commencement in 1878.

Following graduation, he taught at the Pennington School and at his old school of Rugby, before being named in 1882 to head the Dickinson Preparatory School. Soon after, he joined the faculty as an adjunct professor of Greek. He was librarian from 1893 to 1900, consolidating the three College collections into Bosler Hall. In 1890 he was promoted to full professor and also married Mary Curran, an alumna of 1888. He received an honorary doctorate from Bucknell in 1892 and entered the Methodist ministry in 1895. Beginning in 1903 he was the dean of the College under Presidents George Reed and Eugene Noble.

May Morris was born to William Wilkinson and Mary Lutner Collison Morris on June 29, 1886 in Greenwood, Delaware. The Morris family had been occupying an estate there, known as "Morris’ Pleasure," since before the American Revolution. Morris enrolled at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, earning a bachelor of philosophy degree in 1909. She was awarded a degree from the Pratt Institute of Library Science in Brooklyn, New York in 1917. She then began to work in the library at Bryn Mawr College, remaining there for ten years.

Morris then returned to her alma mater to begin her tenure as librarian in 1927. Under her management, the library grew significantly through the years. An intelligent, quiet, and tactful professional, she brought the College Library from rather inadequate resources, both in materials and in space, to a respectable library which well supported the college curriculum of the day. Her concern for preserving the College's past led her to begin to develop a collection of "Dickinsoniana," and these efforts directly influenced the appointment of a curator of the collection, Charles Colman Sellers and the establishment of the Archives and Special Collections department years later. A mark of Morris' success is the fact that the college library doubled its holdings during her tenure, and the annual budget increased more than eight times.

Mary Moser was a 1972 graduate of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, majoring in Latin. She won the Mervin Grant Filler Memorial Prize in classical languages and was named Outstanding Senior Woman.

After such diverse positions as assistant director of admissions at Dickinson to administrator of the American Research Institute in Turkey, she went on to graduate school in classical archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania and earned her Ph.D. in 1982.

She returned to Dickinson's classical studies department in 1982 as an assistant professor teaching Latin and Greek. For fourteen years, she was a teacher both on campus and in study abroad endeavors in Italy and Britain, along the way winning the Ganoe Award for Inspirational Teaching and the Dickinson Award for Distinguished Teaching.

On June 27, 1996, Mary Moser died in Carlisle following a long and valiant battle against cancer.

Franklin Mount Pleasant was born on the Tuscarora reservation near Niagara Falls, New York in 1884. He entered the Carlisle Industrial (Indian) School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1904, and during his three full years there he distinguished himself as an outstanding football player and an accomplished pianist. He played quarterback in 1905 and left halfback in 1906 and 1907. With men like Mount Pleasant and the famous Jim Thorpe, it was little surprise that the Carlisle Indians teams of these years were legendary. (The "Pop" Warner coached Indians did not give up any points at home between 1901 and 1908.) While a member of the Carlisle Industrial student body, Mount Pleasant attended classes at the Dickinson Preparatory School and was able to enroll in the College in 1908 as a member of the class of 1910.

A political science graduate of the class of 1967 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Paul Neely served as a sophomore member of the Student Senate, was the president of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, and played three years on the lacrosse team.

Neely was drafted in November 1967 and went to Vietnam in 1968 as a sergeant with the 1st Air Cavalry Division. He died in Vietnam on April 27, 1969 from wounds he had suffered a day earlier.

Harry W. Nice was born in Washington D.C., on December 5, 1877 the son of Methodist minister Henry Nice and his wife Drucilla Arnold Nice. The family moved to Baltimore, Maryland soon after and he was educated in the public schools there. He was prepared for college at Baltimore City College and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1899 in 1896. He studied at the College for only one year. He left to study law at the University of Maryland, where he graduated with a LL.B degree in 1899.

Nice began a long and distinguished political career with the Republican Party when he was elected to the Baltimore city council in 1903. In swift succession, he served as secretary to the mayor of Baltimore, supervisor of elections in the city, and as a state's attorney. In an initial run for governor in 1919 when he went down to narrow defeat to his law school classmate and grandson of a Dickinsonian in the class of 1853, Albert C. Ritchie. He then distinguished himself as a tax appeal judge between 1920 and 1924 but came to national prominence in 1934 when he defeated the sitting the Democratic governor, his old rival Ritchie, on the unlikely platform that Ritchie was not doing enough in Maryland to aid in President Roosevelt's national recovery efforts. His effective political career came to an end before the end of the decade, however, when he was defeated for re-election in 1938 and again in the 1940 Senate race in Maryland.

John A. Nicolson was born in Laurel, Delaware on November 17, 1827. He was educated at a preparatory seminary in Nelson County, Virginia, possibly the Presbyterian school at Lynchburg, and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1847 in 1843. He was elected as a member of the Union Philosophical Society but withdrew from the College in 1845. He studied law in with Martin W. Bates in Dover, Delaware and took up practice there in April 1850.

He was briefly superintendent of schools in Kent County in 1851 and extended his civic duties in a very different role in the county when he became brigadier general of militia in 1861. He was elected to the United States Congress in 1864 as a Democrat, beating Republican and Ultimate Unionist Nathaniel Smithers, a fellow Dickinsonian. He served two terms, during the first on the Committee of Elections and in the second the Appropriations Committee. He returned to private practice in Dover in 1869.

In August, 1848, he had married Angelica Killeen Reed of Dover and the couple's son, John Reed Nicholson, served later as the chancellor of the high court of the state of Delaware between 1895 and 1909. John Anthony Nicholson died in Dover on November 4, 1906 and was buried in the Presbyterian Cemetery there.

Image courtesy of the National Archives.

Charles Casper Nickel was born in Loysville, Pennsylvania in 1916 and was a graduate of Duncannon High School. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1933 but left after one year of study in the scientific course. During his time at the College he was a member of Theta Chi fraternity. Eventually, he attended journalism school and became an editor and publisher in Perry County, Pennsylvania.

He joined the army soon after Pearl Harbor and served two years before being commissioned at Fort Eustis, Virginia. He was assigned to an anti-aircraft battery in the Pacific theater. On December 8, 1944, during a Japanese attack on the Buri Airfield on Leyte Island, he was mortally wounded and died the next day. He was buried in Dulag Cemetery on Leyte, Republic of the Philippines.

Wilbur Harrington Norcross was born June 28, 1882 in Ralston, Pennsylvania. He attended Dickinson Seminary in Williamsport, Pennsylvania for two years before matriculating into Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as a student in 1905. At Dickinson, he received both his B.A. (1907) and M.A. (1913). He attended Johns Hopkins University for graduate work, receiving his Ph. D. in psychology in 1920.

During this time he was a Methodist minister for one year in Duncannon, Pennsylvania before returning to the Dickinson Seminary to teach Greek and Latin. He became dean by 1912, but left that post to attend Johns Hopkins in 1914. Norcross joined the Dickinson College faculty in 1916 as an associate professor of philosophy and education. When the war interrupted both his graduate studies and his teaching, he served at Love Field in Dallas, Texas as commander of a medical research laboratory for the air service, rising to the rank of major.

He returned to Dickinson in 1920, and, having completed his degree from Hopkins, switched his teaching fields and became an associate professor of psychology and philosophy. Norcross was instrumental in the creation of two distinct departments for philosophy and psychology. In 1924 he became a full professor, and was named to the R. V. C. Watkins Chair of Psychology in 1929.

Birth: May 20, 1803; Mifflin County, Pennsylvania

Death: March 22, 1864 (age 61); Memphis, Tennessee

Military Service: USA, 1861-64

Unit: Paymaster

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1824)

William Brown Norris received his bachelor of arts degree from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1824 and began to study law in Bellefonte. In 1826 he was admitted to the Centre County Bar and began to practice law. However, a loss of his voice forced Norris to abandon that profession; he then moved to Lewistown and became engaged in the iron industry. After several years in this trade, Norris was a surveyor from 1848 to 1852 and was a surveyor for the port of Philadelphia.

A jack-of-all-trades, Norris then entered the insurance business, in which capacity he served until being appointed paymaster of the United States Army. While serving in the army, Norris died in Memphis, Tennessee on March 22, 1864.

Sydney Novell was from Norristown, Pennsylvania, where he graduated from high school. He spent two years at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in the Ph.B. course as a member of the class of 1939. He was a member of Phi Epsilon Pi fraternity but withdrew before his junior year.

Captain Novell lost his life in the service of the United States during the Second World War but the details of his sacrifice are presently not available.

John Och was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in November 1914. He graduated from Harrisburg Catholic and entered Dickinson College in nearby Carlisle with the class of 1937. He pursued a scientific degree, competed on the track team, and was a member of Sigma Chi fraternity. Following his studies at Dickinson, in 1939 he earned a master's degree from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science and took work as a pharmaceutical salesman for a firm in York, Pennsylvania.

Och entered the navy in 1942 and was commissioned in October. Beginning in January 1943, he served seventeen months of sea duty before returning home to be married in June 1944. On October 1944, Och was serving on a heavy cruiser in enemy waters when he was washed overboard during a storm and lost.

Jurgen Von Oertzen was a German student who attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1933-1934 and earned a bachelor's degree with the class of 1934 on June 11, 1934. From Mecklenburg in northern Germany, he was a student at the University of Rostock and was participating in the Institute of International Education's exchange program. The following year, William Woodward, class of 1934, brother of Paul Woodward, class of 1937, studied physics and chemistry at the university in Munich. Known as "Ekky," von Oertzen concentrated his studies in history and economics with the goal of entering the German civil service. He also participated in the varsity soccer team.

When the call for the fifteenth reunion of his class went out in 1949, relatives sent information that on August 21, 1941, Jurgen von Oertzen had been killed in action serving in the German Army during the battle for the Latvian capital of Riga. Latvia had been independent until 1940 when it came under Soviet domination; the German attack was part of the general advance in Hitler's invasion of Russia.

He had married his wife Elizabeth before the war broke out and she and their son and daughter survived the war and lived in western Germany. Unlike other Dickinsonian casualties of the Second World War, von Oertzen does not appear on the plaque in Memorial Hall.

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.

Edward Ernest Palmer was born in Washington DC on November 3, 1868, the son of William G. and Mary Virginia (Webster) Palmer. The boy was named after his uncle Edward Palmer, plant collector and explorer. Young Edward was a diarist whose writing shows his early interest in all things scientific. He was often employed by his uncle to work up specimens, which were sent back from the Western United States, Central and South America. These specimens are found today in the collections at Kew Gardens and the Smithsonian, as well as other herbaria in the United States and Europe.

He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1889, with the class of 1893. As a freshman he won the Muchmore Prize and joined the Union Philosophical Society, serving as its head librarian the following year. Perhaps more significantly for his own future, Colonel Richard Pratt of the Carlisle Indian School lectured that year at the College on the "Past, Present, and Future of the Indian." He served as the president of the junior class, and anchored the champion tug-of-war team of his senior year. Significantly, under the tutelage of pioneer photographer Professor Charles Francis Himes of the Physics Department, Palmer developed his life-long interest in photography. He graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in June, 1893.

Birth: June 29, 1811;  Baltimore, Maryland

Death: April 24, 1883 (age 72); Washington, D.C

Military Service: USN, 1834-73

Unit: USS Brandywine; USS Vincennes; Relief; USS Peacock; USS Princeton; H.M.S. Agamemnon; USS Macedonian; USS Hartford; Admiral Farragut's squadron

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1829); University of Marlyand, M.D. (Class of 1834)

James Croxall Palmer was one of four sons of merchant Edward Palmer and his wife Catherine Croxall Palmer. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and graduated with the class of 1829. He studied law for a time but eventually earned a medical degree from the University of Maryland in 1834. He took up a commission as an assistant surgeon in the United States Navy and by the end of 1835 had completed a voyage around the world in the frigate USS Brandywine and the sloop USS Vincennes.

Andrew Parker was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania on May 21, 1805. He attended local schools and entered the local Dickinson College. He graduated with the class of 1824 and studied law. Parker was admitted to the Cumberland County bar in 1826 and began practice in Lewistown, Pennsylvania. He was appointed as a deputy district attorney to Mifflin County and relocated to Mifflintown in 1831, the year in which Juniata County was carved from Mifflin County. He punctuated his long practice of law there when he was elected to the United States House of Representatives and served one term as a Democrat in the thirty-second Congress between 1851 and 1853.

Andrew Parker died in Mifflintown on January 15, 1864 at the age of fifty-eight and is buried in the Presbyterian Cemetery there.

Donald Parker was born in New Haven, Connecticut on June 27, 1920. He graduated from Lyman Hall High School in Wallingford in the spring of 1938. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1943 on September 21, 1939 but transferred to Wesleyan University where he graduated in 1942.

He worked a short time as an accountant until he was inducted into the U.S. Army in November, 1942. He trained at Fort Riley, Kansas and Camp Polk in Louisiana before shipping to Europe as a tank commander in August, 1944.

He joined the 19th Battalion of the Ninth Armored Division and was killed in action in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge on December 29, 1944.

Marcus Junius Parrott was born on October 29, 1828 in Hamburg, South Carolina, the son of a wealthy Quaker family. His parents left the South when he was a young boy and he grew up in Dayton, Ohio. He was prepared at the Dayton Academy, and went on to study at Ohio Wesleyan University. In December, 1847, Parrott was expelled from Ohio Wesleyan over a clash with his Greek instructor and his refusal to sign a pledge to respect that faculty member. He went on to spend his junior and senior years at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania where he was an active member in the Belles Lettres Society and was co-editor -- with Moncure Conway and John J. Jacob, the future governor of West Virginia -- of the pioneering student publication, the Collegian. Parrott graduated with his class in May, 1849 and moved to Boston, Massachusetts to attend the Cambridge Law School for two years. During his law school career Parrott attended many lectures at Faneuil Hall given by noted abolitionists such as Charles Sumner, George Thompson, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, and Frederick Douglas.

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.

William F. Patton was born in Curwensville, Pennsylvania one of four sons of the wealthy John and Honora J. Patton. He prepared for his undergraduate work at the Dickinson Preparatory School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and entered the College in 1888 with the class of 1892. He was very active in the Belle Lettres Society, serving as its president. He was also the business manager of the Microcosm, secretary of the College Athletic Association, a member of Chi Phi fraternity, gave the Allison public oration on Class Day, and was elected vice-president of the Senior Class. A fine athlete, he captained both football (1890) as a halfback and kicker and baseball (1891 and 1892), playing four years on each team. He also competed in varsity track and field, the Gymnastics team, and was College tennis champion.

After graduating with his class in 1892, he trained as a lawyer and began the practice of law in Curwensville. In 1903, he moved to Kansas City, Missouri and built a successful practice in the law and banking.

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.

Birth: March 14, 1831; Prince George’s County, Maryland

Death:  July3, 1862 (age 31); Lumpkin, Georgia

Military Service: CSA, 1861-62

Unit: ---

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1852)

Samuel Peach entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as a junior in 1850 and received his bachelor of arts degree in 1852. Peach was an active member of the Belles Lettres Literary Society as a student. After graduation he moved to Lumpkin, Georgia and set up a law practice after being admitted to the bar there.

When the war erupted, Peach was commissioned as a colonel in the Confederate States Army. He died in Lumpkin on July 3, 1862 and was buried at East Side cemetery in Lumpkin.