Alumnus/Alumna

William Taylor was the son of Rev. W.P. Taylor, class of 1890, and arrived at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania from Georgetown, Delaware. He entered with the class of 1918, enrolling in the Latin-Scientific course. He was a member of Belles Lettres Literary Society, of Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity, and the Y.M.C.A. He was also a companion of Russell Flegal in the Mandolin Club.

Taylor withdrew from his junior year to enlist and entered the aviation service. He trained first at Princeton, New Jersey and then in the Fifth Air Cadet Squadron at Ellington Field outside of Houston, Texas. Taylor died at Ellington of influenza on October 19, 1918.

Arthur Thomas grew up in Kingston, Pennsylvania. He had been a student at the Pennington School in New Jersey and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1938. He left the College after his freshman year and served more than four years as an artillery officer during the Second World War.

Thomas lost his life in the crash of a "troop train" on a stretch of railway line near West Lafayette, Ohio on September 11, 1950. In the accident, scores of his fellow members of the 28th Division of the Pennsylvania National Guard being transported west were also killed. He was survived by his wife and four infant children.

Philip Thomas was born the son of a prominent physician in Talbot County, Maryland on September 12, 1810. He attended his home academy in Easton and then went on to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, entering with the class of 1830. He attended during two of the most chaotic years in the history of the College concerning student discipline. Thomas was involved with the November 24, 1828 incident in which the college janitor was ejected from his apartments in the dead of night and damage was caused to the rooms. In December, Thomas and several others were suspended for a month when the faculty discovered their role in this incident. Thomas served his suspension but then was dismissed for refusing to sign the pledge of good behavior that the faculty was requiring of students, after a late January "riot" caused by the mandatory attendance of daily chapel resulted in the suspension of the entire student body. He returned to Maryland and took to studying the law privately. He was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1831.

Russell Thompson was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on December 29, 1898, the son and grandson of physicians, which may account for his undergraduate nickname, "Doc." He attended Reading High School and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1920. As an undergraduate he was a member of Belles Lettres Literary Society and Kappa Sigma fraternity, served as a cabinet officer in the Y.M.C.A., and was editor-in-chief of the 1919/1920 Microcosm.

After graduation he taught Greek at the Williamsport Seminary before going on to study education and psychology at Yale. While there he was director of the Wesley Settlement House of the Methodist Episcopal Church in New Haven between 1926 and 1928 before earning his Ph.D. in 1932.

He returned to his alma mater for the 1928 fall term to teach in his two doctoral subjects. He was soon promoted to associate professor and helped to develop the teaching of psychology and education at the College during the 1930s. In 1941,when Professor Wilbur Norcross died suddenly, Thompson became full professor, the Richard V.C. Watkins Chair of Psychology and Education, and head of the department.

Egloff von Tippelskirch was a German exchange student who spent a year at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania under the auspices of the Institute of International Education and received a degree with the class of 1933. The following year saw Jurgen von Oertzen arrive on a similar program.

Born in Charlottenburg on June 5, 1913 near Brandenburg in northern Germany, Tippelskirch attended boarding school at Dahlen, outside of Berlin. He went on to the Universities of Berlin and Freiburg where he took his law examinations before arriving in Carlisle. In the words of the Dickinsonian, "a tall and unassuming boy," he studied American criminal law and history while at the College. He returned to Berlin and ultimately earned his doctorate.

According to reports from his family, Egloff von Tippelskirch served in the German Army on the eastern front where he was captured. He died in February 1946 in a Russian prisoner of war camp. His name does not appear on the Dickinson Second World War plaque in Memorial Hall.

Glenn E. Todd was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on January 12, 1890 to Robert R. and Phoebe Routzahn Todd. A life-long resident of Carlisle, he attended Carlisle High School, graduating in 1908, and then enrolled at the local Dickinson College. Todd graduated from Dickinson in 1912, but not before becoming an active member of Sigma Chi. He then entered the family business, the Todd Carpet Manufacturing Company, where he would later become co-owner with his brother. During World War I, Todd served as a corporal in the infantry, and on December 24, 1918, he was honorably discharged.

Returning to Carlisle after the War, he became a successful businessman at Todd Carpet and a well known member of the community. In addition to co-owning the carpet business, he became a partner in the Philadelphia Clay Company and the vice-president of the Board of Directors at the Farmers Trust Company. He was also a member of the boards of the Carlisle Hospital, the Mercersburg Academy, and the Homewood Church Homes; president of both the Carlisle Chamber of Commerce and the Carlisle Rotary Club, and a Carlisle Borough council member for fifteen years. Throughout his life, Todd remained involved in Sigma Chi as well, serving as president of the Harrisburg Area Alumni Chapter and treasurer of the Omicron Chapter before being elected to the organization's highest honor, the Order of Constantine.

Lemuel Todd was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on July 29, 1817. He entered the class of 1839 at Dickinson College in his home town, took the classical course, and was elected to the Union Philosophical Society. Upon graduation, he studied law in the offices of General Samuel Alexander, an earlier Dickinson graduate, and, when he was called to the Cumberland County bar in 1841, took up a partnership with Alexander and began a practice in Carlisle.

William Trickett was born on June 9, 1840 in the English Midlands town of Leicester. When he was very young his family moved from England to Philadelphia where he lived until he entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1866. Two years later he was awarded his bachelor of arts degree. Upon graduation in 1868, Trickett assumed the role of principal of the Dickinson Grammar School for one year, followed by service for two years as adjunct professor of philosophy at the College. He earned his master's degree from Dickinson in 1871 and, immediately following, left to tour Europe for two years.

Trickett returned to Dickinson, teaching modern languages for a year, but in 1875 he was among the three faculty members whose contracts were not renewed by President James McCauley. Trickett then began to focus his energies on the law, and in 1876 he was admitted to the Cumberland County Bar Association. In 1890 he received an honorary degree in law from DePauw University, and in that same year he was selected to serve as dean of Dickinson Law School. Trickett would retain this position until his death on August 1, 1928. Trickett Hall on the campus of the Dickinson School of Law is named in his honor. He never married.

John Southgate Tucker was born on May 31, 1838 in Norfolk, Virginia, where his family on both sides had been prominent since before the American Revolution. He attended the Episcopal School in Alexandria, Virginia and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1853 and joined the class of 1855. While at Dickinson, he was elected as a member of the Belles Lettres Society and also became one of the notorious founder members of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity. He graduated with his class in the early summer of 1855 and studied for the law.

For a time he was editor of the Norfolk Virginia newspaper and practiced law in the city. At the outbreak of the Civil War he joined the army of the Confederate States and rose to the rank of captain of artillery. Returning home to Norfolk, he served as city attorney between 1866 and 1868; he was the Mayor of Norfolk from 1876 to 1880. As mayor, he was instrumental in persuading a reluctant city council to build a new public school for African-Americans to replace the dilapidated Bute Street School. Later he was a member on nearby Yorktown's centennial commission celebrating the anniversary of the British defeat there. He also worked as federally appointed examiner of land claims at the main United States Land Office in Washington D.C.

Ruby Vale was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on October 19, 1874 the son of of Joseph and Sarah Eyster Vale. His father had been a Civil War cavalry officer. Vale attended the Dickinson Preparatory School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and entered the College proper with the class of 1896 in 1892. He became a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and was elected as a member of Belles Lettres Society. A particularly active and admired student, he edited both the Dickinsonian and the Microcosm. He was also an outstanding athlete who played three years of varsity football as halfback and quarterback and captained the 1895 team.

Following his undergraduate years, he spent a time as the principal of the Milford (Delaware) Classical School. He then enrolled in the Dickinson School of Law and graduated with top honors for his law degree in 1899. Though remaining a resident of Milford, he began his practice before the Pennsylvania bar and developed into a well known lawyer and legal scholar. He also developed his specialty in corporation and insurance law; his offices were by then in Philadelphia. As a legal scholar, he published widely on Pennsylvania law, his best known work was his ten volume Vale's Pennsylvania Digest.

John Verban, Jr. was born on July 21, 1911, the son of John and Mary Fliszar Verban of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He attended Allentown Preparatory School before entering Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in September 1931 as a member of the Class of 1935. During his time at the College he was a member of Theta Chi fraternity. However, Verban withdrew from Dickinson in June 1933 following the death of his father. He took a job in an insurance company, and in October 1939 he married Matilda Borda of Bethlehem. The couple had a son, John Borda Verban, in 1943.

Verban served his country during the Second World War as a private in Company F of the 337th Infantry. Fighting in Italy in October 1944, he was seriously wounded in combat. Family records indicate that Verban died in an Italian hospital near Castello Fiorentino on October 16, 1944, and was buried there. Some years later the body was exhumed and buried in Bethlehem. Further details of his sacrifice are unknown.

From Bloomfield, New Jersey, Alvah Wallace was a political science major in the class of 1964 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He was a member of Omicron Delta Kappa honor society, president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and a R.O.T.C. graduate.

Lieutenant Wallace died at Brooke Army Hospital Burn Center in San Antonio, Texas in December 1964. He had been critically injured a month before in the crash of his army aircraft at Fort Bragg, North Carolina where he was a pilot with the 82nd Airborne Division. The incident took place just two weeks after his return from his deployment with the United States Peacekeeping Force to the Dominican Republic. An alcove at the Boyd Lee Spahr Library commemorates his life.

James Wallace was born on March 14, 1818 to a prominent Dorchester County family in Cambridge, Maryland. He entered Dickinson College with the class of 1840 in the autumn of 1836. He was elected to the Belles Lettres Society and graduated with his class in the early summer of 1840. He returned to Cambridge and studied law, gaining admittance to the Maryland bar in 1842 and opened a successful practice.

His success and his local prominence brought him into politics and he served a term in the Maryland house of delegates between 1854 and 1856 and moved on to the state senate between 1856 and 1860. In 1856, having become involved with the American Party, he was a presidential elector, duly casting his ballot for Millard Fillmore. After the outbreak of the Civil War, he helped raise the First Maryland Volunteers (Eastern Shore) in August 1861 and took command as its colonel. The unit was intended to protect Union interests on the Eastern shore and elsewhere in Maryland but in July 1863, the First found itself at Gettysburg fighting on the third day of the battle around Culp's Hill. In the regiment's only day of pitched battle during its entire service, and with Wallace in command, it met and mauled the First Maryland Regiment of the Confederate States Army that contained many of their friends and neighbors from coastal Maryland. The regiment, and its colonel, ended its enlistment and mustered out two days before Christmas in 1863.

Robert Walsh was born in Plains, Pennsylvania in March 1920 and graduated from Plains High School in 1937. He spent one year at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as a member of the class of 1941 between his freshman year at Pennsylvania State University and his graduation from the University of Scranton. While at Dickinson he was a pledge of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

He enlisted in the Army Air Corps three weeks after Pearl Harbor; he trained in Alabama before basic flight school at Shaw Field in South Carolina and advanced training at Marianna Field in Florida, where he was commissioned in December 1942. He left the United States for active duty in March 1943. Walsh became part of the India-China Wing and on May 15, 1943 was posted as missing in action when his aircraft failed to return from a flight between India and China. Early in the following year, his parents received word that his body had been found with his crew in the wreckage of his aircraft in northern Burma, the victims of Japanese fire, and he was declared as killed in action.

David Harrison Walton was born on October 21, 1830 in Shenandoah County, Virginia, near the town of Woodstock. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and graduated with his class in the early summer of 1854. He was a superior student and a member of the Union Philosophical Society. Following his undergraduate years, he studied law in Lexington, Virginia.

He practiced law, and when the Civil War broke out he helped raise a company in his home county that became Company K of the 33rd Virginia Infantry, nicknamed the "Shenandoah Sharpshooters," and was commissioned as its first commander. The unit became a part of the Stonewall Brigade that fought famously at the first Battle of Bull Run (Manassas). In June 1862, with the regiment and brigade suffering some discipline and leadership problems, Walton was reduced to the ranks of the 33rd. He fought as an enlisted man and was wounded at the second encounter at Bull Run (Manassas) in August 1862 and was soon restored to the rank of lieutenant before the unit was engaged at Antietam (Sharpsburg) in September 1862. He continued with the 33rd and was wounded in action at Cedar Creek in October 1864.

Following the war, he returned to law practice in Woodstock. David Harrison Walton died in his hometown on July 7, 1876 and was buried in the Massanutten Cemetery in Woodstock. He was forty-five years old.

Littleton Washington was born in Washington D.C. on November 3, 1825, the son of Lund Washington, whose forebears were cousins of the family of the first president. He enrolled with the class of 1845 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and, while there, was an active student, gaining election to the Belles Lettres Society. He was forced, though, to withdraw from the College due to family financial difficulties. He found gainful employment instead as a clerk in the U.S. Treasury.

Washington became a freelance journalist and then took the opportunity offered in a job as assistant collector in the United States Customs House in San Francisco, California, traveling by ship via Panama. He landed in the city at the time of the vigilante violence of 1856 and actively stood with the legal city government against the mob violence designed to rid the city of law breakers. With Buchanan's election, his position went to another and he returned to Washington, this time overland by way of Mexico, experiencing sundry adventures along the unruly and dangerous route. Back in the capitol, he drifted somewhat, fighting the occasional duel and moving on the fringes of government. He supported the hard-line Democrats and, when the split came, he followed his states' rights leanings, at one point helping to organize a pro-southern group called the "National Volunteers." When hostilities commenced in April 1861, he left Washington for Richmond.

Norman Watkins was born in Minersville, Pennsylvania in 1919, the son of a Dickinson Law School graduate. The younger Watkins prepared at Baltimore Polytechnic and entered the Dickinson College in 1940. He withdrew in 1942 to attend the Dickinson School of Law. He withdrew from there in January 1943 to enlist in the United States Army.

Watkins received his commission in July 1943, and in October left for combat duty in Europe as commander of a platoon of Combat Engineers. His unit participated in the D-Day landings, and, after sufficient rest, was then sent back into action in Normandy.

On July 27, 1944, Lieutenant Watkins was killed in action at the head of his platoon.

Richard Vivian Curnow Watkins was born July 31, 1888 in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania to Matthew K. and Jennie Curnow Watkins. As a child, he lived at the family’s home at 102 North Hickory Street. He attended Conway Hall, Dickinson College's preparatory school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and entered the College proper in 1908 and pursued Special Studies. His brother, M. K. Watkins, was already a student at the College and graduated in 1909. At Dickinson, Watkins became a member of Phi Kappa Sigma, but during his junior year, he was forced to withdraw from school due to his failing health.

After withdrawing, he moved to Brown’s Mills, New Jersey, and later to Burlington. Despite leaving school, however, he maintained a friendship with Professor Wilber H. Norcross, head of the psychology department at the College who had been at College with him in the class of 1907 and a fellow member of Phi Kappa Sigma. On September 12, 1927, at the age of thirty-nine, Watkins died of a lingering illness in his home in Burlington. In 1929, the Richard V. C. Watkins Chair of Psychology was established with $50,000 left to the College in Watkins’ estate. Later that year, his friend Norcross became the first professor to hold the new position.

Frederick Watts was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on May 9, 1801. His father was David Watts, a prominent lawyer and member of the first class to graduate from the local Dickinson College. Frederick himself entered Dickinson with the class of 1819 but did not graduate due to the temporary closing of the College in 1816. Frederick went to live with his uncle, William Miles, on Miles' farm in Erie County after the death of David Watts in 1819. However, Henry Miller Watts, Frederick's brother, did graduate from the College in 1824.

Henry Miller Watts was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the son of David Watts and the grandson of Revolutionary War generals on both sides of his family. He was educated in the best schools available at the time and entered the local Dickinson College with the class of 1824; his brother, Frederick Watts, had attended earlier, with the class of 1819. Following graduation, Henry studied law with Andrew Carothers, who also trained his brother and, in turn, had trained in the law office of the father of the two as a young man. Henry Watts passed the Cumberland County bar in 1827 and then, perhaps to escape the close professional family he had joined, traveled to Pittsburgh in the west of the state to set up his own practice.

Isaac Wayne was born in 1772, the youngest of two children and the only son of Anthony and Mary Penrose Wayne of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Anthony Wayne was a distinguished Revolutionary War general who had served with Washington at Valley Forge and had contributed to the American victory at the Battle of Monmouth. Young Isaac was educated at the local common schools before graduating from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1792; he may have also attended Princeton for a short time prior to entering Dickinson. After graduation, Wayne studied law and was admitted to the Philadelphia Bar in 1795.

Just as his father had served his country in the military, Isaac Wayne served as representative of the people. He was elected to the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives in 1799 and served a two-year term; he was again elected in 1806. Four years later, he was elected a state senator. At the outbreak of war in 1812, Wayne helped to raise a cavalry troop from Chester and surrounding counties, and became a colonel in the Second Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers. When the war ended, he returned to public life, though he ran unsuccessfully as the Federalist candidate for Pennsylvania governor in 1814. He returned to the family farm in Waynesborough in Easttown Township, Chester County to attend to his estate there.

Robert Blaine Weaver was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on March 7, 1850 to John H. and Lacey Davidson McCord Weaver. He attended the local Dickinson Preparatory School, before entering the College proper in 1870. Weaver joined the Theta Delta Chi fraternity at Dickinson and graduated from the College in 1874.

He went on to become a businessman in Carlisle. Throughout his life, he was an active member of the Union Philosophical Society and the Second Presbyterian Church of Carlisle. In his later years, he resided with his sister, Laura Davidson Weaver, at 127 North Hanover St., the house in which the two were born.

On August 12, 1927, Weaver died, bequeathing his entire estate, valued at approximately $65,000, to his sister, with the money to be directed to Dickinson upon her death. On July 15, 1932, Laura Davidson Weaver died, leaving $35,296 and the property on North Hanover St., appraised at $7000, to the College. With this gift, the Robert Blaine Weaver Chair of Political Science was established in 1950.

Edwin H. Webster was born at Churchville in Harford County, Maryland to Henry and Martha Webster on March 31, 1829. From a Presbyterian family, he prepared for college at the local Academy and later at the famed New London Academy in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1844 and graduated three years later with the class of 1847.

Jesse Wharton was born in Covesville in Albermarle County in Virginia on July 29, 1776, a year after his brother Austin Wharton (1775-1835). Both attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and graduated with the class of 1794. While his brother Austin went on to practice medicine in Cumberland County, Virginia, Jesse studied the law and was admitted to the Bar in his home county. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee with his practice and was elected as a Republican to the Tenth Congress in 1807 serving only one term. He remained prominent in Tennessee Republican circles and five years later was appointed to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of George W. Campbell. He served from March 17, 1814 to October 10, 1815, when a successor was elected.

He continued his law practice in Nashville although President Andrew Jackson appointed him as a member of the board of visitors to the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York in 1832. He married and had at least one daughter, Sarah, who married Thomas Jefferson Green of North Carolina. Green was later a general in the Texas forces and a hero of the Texas Revolution. Wharton also raised and educated his brother William's orphaned sons, both of whom also later played a prominent role in the Texas War of Independence. Jesse Wharton died in Nashville on July 22, 1833.

Robert Whitman was from Binghamton, New York, where he graduated from Central High School. He entered Dickinson with the class of 1938, but spent only his freshman year at Dickinson before transferring to the United States Naval Academy. He graduated from Annapolis in 1939. While at the College, he became a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity and participated in freshman football. Whitman lost his life on June 4, 1942, while in action as a Navy pilot during the Battle of Midway.