Honorary Degree

Rolland Adams was born on December 27, 1904 in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania to Lemuel B. and Carrie Adams. He attended Dickinson College as a member of the class of 1927, during which time he was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Adams then completed an extension course in finance from the Pennsylvania State University before entering a life-long career in publishing. He worked in various capacities, eventually serving as president of several publishing companies in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He was the owner and chief executive officer of the Bethlehem Globe Publishing Company until his retirement in 1970.

Adams was one of many alumni who renewed their commitment to the College during the 1950s Ten Year Development Program. During this time, the administration made new contacts and renewed previous connections with potential supporters of the College in an effort to increase its endowment. Adams was elected a trustee of Dickinson College in 1961. Two years later, the college opened Adams Hall, named for him and his first wife, Pauline S. Hornbach, whose generous donation made the new building possible. In 1966, Dickinson awarded Adams an honorary doctor of laws degree in recognition of his achievements and service. During his years as a trustee of the college, Adams served on the Executive Committee and on the Committee on Finance and Investments, and chaired the Committee on Nominations and Membership for three years. Rolland Leroy Adams died on September 1, 1979.

Born in 1935, George Allan was educated at Grinnell College, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1957. He went on to earn his master's degree in systematic theology at the Union Theological Seminary and was then awarded a Ph.D. in philosophy at Yale.

Allan joined the Dickinson faculty as an instructor in philosophy and religion in 1963. In 1974, he was appointed dean of the college, a post he held for more than twenty years. In December 1986, President Samuel Alston Banks resigned from his position at Dickinson to accept the presidency of Richmond University. Allan subsequently took on the duties of acting president of the college. Making it very clear that he had no interest in the presidency in his own right, Allan assisted in the search for a successor. He duly relinquished his post to A. Lee Fritschler, who was inaugurated as the twenty-sixth president of the college in the autumn of 1987. With modesty and humor, Allan considered his crowning achievement as president to be the return of the Mermaid (in well-crafted facsimile) to its rightful and celebrated place atop Old West. Allan continued to serve as dean of the college until his retirement.

Born on September 23, 1880, C. Scott Althouse was the only child of Nathan S. and Miranda Althouse. In 1900, he graduated from the Philadelphia Textile Institute. Returning home to Reading, Pennsylvania, Althouse joined his father in the business of dyeing textiles. He soon made his presence known through his inventions. Among his earliest innovations were a belt dressing compound that made leather machine belts last longer, a shrink-proofing process for wool, and a rotary pocket and paddle dyeing machine which vastly expanded the dyeing capacity for hosiery.

In 1905, Althouse became co-owner of the Neversink Dyeing Company, named for the industrial street on which it was located in Reading. From 1911 to 1915, his company expanded as Althouse concentrated on the development of Cupro-ammonium Rayon, or “Bemberg”. Difficulties in perfecting the process for “Bemberg” and a First World War blockade of Germany which created a severe shortage of dyestuffs prompted Althouse to concentrate on developing new sources of dyes. He founded the Althouse Chemical Company, Inc. in 1915, and the company soon became his primary interest. When his other business interests failed during the Great Depression, Althouse moved ACC, Inc. towards the marketing of specialty dye products that included fade-resistant dyes for viscose rayon and dyes for DuPont’s nylon.

Milton Baron Asbell was born on August 23, 1913 in Camden, New Jersey and attended his local city schools, graduating from Camden High School in 1931. He enrolled at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in September 1933 in the class of 1937. After a freshman year in which he attained the highest grade in English, Algebra, Plane Geometry, and German, "Mickey" Asbell transferred to the University of Maryland Dental School and graduated with the D.D.S. in 1938.

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.

Spencer Fullerton Baird was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on February 3, 1823 to Samuel Baird and Lydia McFunn Biddle, the third of seven children. The family relocated to Carlisle, Pennsylvania following the death of Baird's father from cholera in 1833. Baird entered Dickinson College as a freshman in 1837, receiving his A.B. degree in 1840. Following graduation, Baird attended the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York for one year, but found that he had a dislike for the medical practice and returned to Carlisle to continue with his studies. In 1843, the College conferred upon him the degree of Master of Arts, and in 1856, an honorary degree of Doctor of Physical Science. During this time, Baird married Mary Helen Churchill, and the young couple later had a daughter, Lucy Hunter Baird.

Daniel Moore Bates was born in Laurel, Delaware on January 28, 1821 as Daniel Elzey Moore, the son of Methodist minister Jacob Moore. He had lost his mother very early in life and as a young boy traveled with his father on his circuit. When his father died in 1829 he was still only eight and he was taken in by local lawyer Martin Waltham Bates and his wife, Mary Hillyard Bates. They became his well loved family and he adopted their name legally, becoming Daniel Moore Bates. In later life he would care for his ailing father until his death in 1869. The Bates were influential and wealthy, and thanks to their efforts, Daniel was able to enter Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the age of fourteen and graduate with the class of 1839.

Henry Lewis Baugher was born in Abbottstown, Adams County, Pennsylvania on July 19, 1804 to tanner Christian Frederick and his wife Ann Catharine Matter Baugher. He was educated in Reverend David McConaughty's school in Gettysburg and entered Dickinson College in 1822. He was admitted to the Belles Lettres Literary Society that same year. At the commencement ceremony in 1826, Baugher, who received secondary honors, gave the Latin Salutatory Address.

After graduating from Dickinson, Baugher made arrangements to study law with Francis Scott Key, famous for drafting the verses of the current U.S. National Anthem, in Georgetown, but after the death of his mother, changed course and entered first the Princeton Seminary and then the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg. Following in the footsteps of his grandfather, he was ordained a Lutheran pastor in 1833. Baugher quickly was noted for his preaching ability and became a professor of classical studies at Pennsylvania College (now Gettysburg College) in 1832. In September 1850, the Board of Trustees unanimously voted him the second president of the Pennsylvania College, a position he would not relinquish until his death in 1868. Baugher remained an active member of the teaching faculty and remained a minister while President of the College. His presidency was noted by his stern disciplinary practices and high standards.

George Washington Bethune was born into the devout and wealthy family of Divie and Joanna Graham Bethune of New York City on March 18, 1805. His father was a highly successful merchant of Huguenot extraction and both his parents had been born in Scotland. George was privately tutored at home, attended school in Salem, New York, and entered Columbia College in 1819. In January 1822, upon the re-opening of Dickinson College under President John Mason, Bethune came to Carlisle and enrolled and graduated in June 1823. He then studied theology at Princeton and served briefly on a mission to seamen in Charleston, South Carolina in 1826 before being ordained in the Second Presbytery of New York in November 1827.

Roscoe Bonisteel was born in Canada on December 23, 1888 to Milton Fremont and Francis Whyte Bonisteel in Sidney Crossing, Ontario. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1908 as a member of the class of 1912. Before graduating, Bonisteel transferred to the University of Michigan where he received his law degree in 1912.

On September 12, 1914, he married Lillian Coleman Randoph. After serving as a Captain in the United States Army Air Service during the First World War, Bonisteel moved with his young wife to Ann Arbor, Michigan. There he began his career as a lawyer, serving as city attorney from 1921 to 1928. In addition to his professional commitments, Bonisteel served as a trustee for Wayne State University and as a regent for the University of Michigan. He supported the Historical Society of Michigan, serving as a trustee for a number of years.

In 1952, Dickinson College awarded Bonisteel an honorary doctor of laws degree. Seven years later, he was elected to the Board of Trustees. During his years of service to the college, Bonisteel donated funds for a planetarium and observatory, and supported the Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections. Roscoe Osmond Bonisteel died on February 25, 1972.

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.

Thomas Bowman was born in Briarcreek Township near Berwick, Pennsylvania on July 15, 1817. His father was a successful businessman and the family had been Methodists since Francis Asbury had converted, and later ordained, Bowman's grandfather, also named Thomas, in 1780. Young Thomas was educated in the local schoolhouse and then entered Wilbraham Academy in Massachusetts for a year, progressing to the Casenovia Seminary in New York where he studied for three years. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as a junior in 1835 and graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1837, the first class to graduate under the management of the Methodist Church.

Josephine Brunyate was born on April 14, 1879, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, the daughter of a prominent clergyman, Edwin Richard Brunyate and his wife Eliza. Home tutored first, she attended the State Model School in Trenton, New Jersey and then entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with advance standing in 1899. She graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors in three years in 1901. After her graduation, Brunyate taught in high schools located in Pleasantville, Atlantic City, and Trenton, New Jersey. In August, 1908 she married Arthur J. Meredith of Boston, Massachusetts and had one daughter. Following the death of her husband in 1917, she returned to teaching at the high school in Woodbury, New Jersey.

James Buchanan, fifteenth president of the United States, was born near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania on April 23, 1791 to parents of Scotch-Irish descent. Buchanan attended the Mercersburg Academy until the fall of 1807, when he entered the junior class of Dickinson College. He found the school to be in "wretched condition" with "no efficient discipline." However, his own behavior while at Dickinson was far from exemplary; he was expelled during the fall vacation of 1808 for bad behavior. After making a pledge of good behavior to his minister, Dr. John King (a college trustee), Buchanan was readmitted to Dickinson. In his senior year, he felt slighted by the faculty because he did not win the top award of the College for which his literary society had nominated him. Buchanan commented, "I left college, . . . feeling little attachment to the Alma Mater."

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. 

Charles Cleveland was born on December 3, 1802 in Salem, Massachusetts. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1827. Three years later, he came to Dickinson College as professor of Greek and Latin. On his own initiative he added history and literature to his classes. From 1830 to 1832, Cleveland also served as librarian of the College. By all reports, he was well liked by the students, but not by the college president and other faculty members. His views on the method of instruction conflicted with those of his colleagues; the tensions that arose led to his resignation in 1832. Before leaving Carlisle, however, in 1831 Cleveland married Alison Nisbet McCoskry, the granddaughter of the College’s first president, Charles Nisbet.

Cleveland then moved to the University of New York as professor of Latin. From 1834 to 1861, he was principal of a young ladies’ school in Philadelphia. He served as United States Consul at Cardiff, Wales in 1861. Cleveland was a member of the American Philosophical Society, and was active in the causes of international peace and the abolition of slavery. In 1866, he was awarded and honorary doctorate from Dickinson College. Charles Dexter Cleveland died on August 18, 1869.

Charles Collins was born on April 17, 1813 in North Yarmouth, Maine to Joseph Warren and Hannah Sturdivant Collins. At the age of fourteen he became a member of the Church of Christ and went on to prepare for college at the Maine Wesleyan Seminary. He then entered Wesleyan University and graduated with the highest honors in his class in 1837, as well as Phi Beta Kappa honors. Following his graduation he took a job as the principal of a high school in Augusta, Maine for one year. In 1838, he became the first president, as well as treasurer and a professor of natural sciences at Emory and Henry College in Western Virginia. He would remain there for a period of fourteen years that saw the making of the reputation both of the institution and himself. This undoubtedly led in 1851 to the honorary doctor of divinity degree he received from Dickinson and his subsequent election, on July 7, 1852 at the age of 39, as the eleventh president of the College.

James Wesley Colona, son of Robert W. and Anna Ellen Colona was born on January 13, 1872 in Stockton, Maryland. Before entering Dickinson College in 1896, James attended Wilmington Conference Academy, a Methodist preparatory school in Wilmington, Delaware.

While at Dickinson, Colona was heavily involved in campus life. He was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon and of the Belles Lettres Society. He also worked in the library. A third baseman for the Dickinson College varsity baseball team in 1897, Colona had a fielding average of .791. Colona was also involved in the Dickinsonian, and was the chairman of the Devotional Committee of the YMCA. A devout Methodist, he is mentioned in the Dickinsonian as preaching at a local church in Mt. Holly Springs on September 17, 1898. He graduated in June, 1899 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree.

Colona then attended Drew Theological Seminary where he graduated with a B.D. in 1902 and began service as a pastor. From 1901 to 1902, he was the pastor at the Methodist Episcopal Church in Round Hill, Connecticut. He then was a pastor at an Annamessex, Delaware church from 1902-1904 and then headed a church in Princess Anne, Maryland. Colona was also a superintendent of the Wilmington School District for six years and pastor of churches in Wilmington and Smyrna, Delaware.

Moncure Daniel Conway, the second son of a distinguished family from Stafford County, Virginia, was born on March 17, 1832. His father, Walker Peyton Conway, was a prominent slaveholding landowner, a magistrate, and a representative to the Virginia legislature. His mother, Margaret Daniel Conway, could trace her family to the earliest days of the commonwealth. Both his parents had converted to Methodism, he from the Episcopalians and she from the Presbyterians, and the Conway children were exposed at an early age to evangelicalism. Moncure Conway first went to a family school and then attended the thriving Fredericksburg Classical and Mathematical Academy, a school that had educated George Washington and other famous Virginians. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as a sophomore at the age of fifteen. Conway advanced quickly at the Methodist affiliated college and graduated with the class of 1849. While there he had begun his career as a writer, founding the College's first student publication, fell somewhat under the influence of Professor John McClintock, and had also embraced the Methodist Church. After thoughts about a career in law, and despite emerging doctrinal doubts, the young graduate became a circuit-riding Methodist minister in 1851. Increasingly uncomfortable with conformity, he soon left Methodism for Unitarianism and enrolled at Harvard's Divinity School.

Fred Pierce Corson was born to Mary Payne and Jeremiah Corson, a glass manufacturer, on April 11, 1896 in Millville, New Jersey. He graduated from Millville High School in 1913 and enrolled in Dickinson College. While at Dickinson he was a member of Kappa Sigma Fraternity as well as Omicron Delta Kappa, Tau Kappa Alpha and Tau Delta Kappa. He graduated with an A.B. degree in 1917 cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. His nickname at the College, spawned by his seriousness, was, ironically in light of later events, "the Bishop."

He went on to study at Drew Theological Seminary and earned a bachelor's degree of divinity in 1920. He also received a Master of Arts degree from Dickinson College in 1920. Following his graduation from Drew, Corson entered the New York East Annual Conference of the Methodist church, in which he had been ordained in 1919, and took on pastorates on Long Island, New York , New Haven, Connecticut and Brooklyn, New York. He was elected as the district superintendent in the New York East Methodist Conference in 1929 and received an honorary doctorate of divinity in 1933 from Syracuse University.

Forrest Craver was born September 24, 1875 one of the four children of Frank and Mary Craver, in Scanlin, Pennsylvania He attended Berwick High School, Wyoming Seminary and Dickinson Preparatory School before entering Dickinson College in September 1895. While at Dickinson College, Craver excelled in both athletics and academics. He was a fine scholar, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and captained the track and football teams. "Cap" also served the Union Philosophical Society, and as treasurer of the college YMCA, editor of both the Hand Book, and the Microcosm, and president of his class during sophomore year. He was also a member of Phi Kappa Sigma.

John A. J. Creswell was born on November 18, 1828 at Port Deposit, Maryland, then called Creswell's Ferry. He attended a local academy and then went on to enroll at Dickinson with the class of 1848. He was an excellent student, was elected to the Belles Lettres Society, and delivered the valedictory oration at his commencement.

George Crooks was born on February 3, 1822, the son of George Richard Crooks, Sr. of Philadelphia. He was a member of the class of 1840, and graduated with the highest honors. Crooks served as an itinerant preacher first on the Canton circuit of Illinois in 1841, then on the frontier. He returned to his alma mater in the fall of 1841 as a tutor in the Dickinson Grammar School. In 1843, Crooks was promoted to principal of the Grammar School, a position that he filled until 1848. From 1846 to 1848, he also served as adjunct professor of Latin and Greek in the college.

Crooks resigned from the college in 1848 when his mentor, Professor John McClintock, resigned. He filled posts as a Methodist preacher for the Philadelphia Conference until 1857, when he transferred his affiliation to the New York East Conference. Crooks edited The Methodist from 1860 until 1875; one year later, he retired from the conference. In 1880 Crooks joined McClintock at the Drew Theological Seminary, teaching church history there until 1897. During his lifetime, Crooks received two honorary degrees from Dickinson College: the first in 1857 and the second in 1873.

Charles Force Deems was born in Baltimore, Maryland on December 4, 1820, the son of George and Mary Roberts Deems. The family was very pious - his mother was the daughter of a Methodist minister - and from a young age Deems exhibited signs of his future calling, once preaching temperance in public at the age of thirteen. He entered Dickinson College in 1835 with the intention of a career in the law. By the time he graduated in 1839, however, he was well on his way to joining the clergy and entered the Methodist ministry in Asbury, New Jersey.

Soon after, however, Deems began his sojourn in the South when he accepted a post in 1840 as general agent for the American Bible Society of North Carolina. This led to a professorship at the University of North Carolina, teaching logic and rhetoric from 1842 to 1848. He moved on to Randolph-Macon College in Virginia for a year in 1849, teaching natural sciences. At the end of that year he was named as pastor of the Methodist chapel at New Berne, North Carolina. He had barely taken up his duties when he was elected to the presidency of Greensboro (N.C.) Women's College and served there until 1854. He then returned to the New Berne district, concentrating on his pastorate and beginning his writing career in earnest.

William Wilcox Edel was born on March 16, 1894 in Baltimore, Maryland. His mother was Annie Wilcox, and his father was John Wesley Edel, a prosperous dairy retailer. Edel attended high school at Baltimore City College and then entered Dickinson College, where he graduated in three years as a Phi Beta Kappa member of the class of 1915. While an undergraduate, Edel became a member of the Belles Lettres Literary Society and the Alpha Chi Rho fraternity. He also contributed illustrations to the 1915 Microcosm.

After graduation, Edel and six other members of the class of 1915 enrolled in the School of Theology at Boston University. Edel graduated from that institution in 1918. The outbreak of war caused him to enlist as a chaplain in the U.S. Navy on July 11, 1917. During his thirty-year career, Edel saw service at sea in the Atlantic, served as superintendent of education in American Samoa, and was area chaplain for the South Pacific during the Second World War. In 1935, he received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from his alma mater. Ten years later, Edel was nearing retirement as a captain, the highest rank then open to a naval chaplain. The Dickinson board of trustees, having been unable to secure other earlier choices, turned to Edel on June 7, 1946 and elected him as the twenty-second president of the College.