Entries drawn from the college history encyclopedia
Asbury Jones Clarke was born in Highland County, Virginia on September 14, 1841, the son of James M. and Mary K. Clarke. After preparing at the Baltimore City College and the Light Street Institute, he entered Dickinson in 1862. While at the College, he became a member of Phi Kappa Psi, and...
Born November 4, 1748 in Castle Finn, near Strabane in County Donegal, Ireland, Robert Coleman was one of eight children from his father Thomas Coleman's two marriages. Persuaded by a clergyman, he followed his brother's lead and left Ireland for America in 1764. He arrived in Philadelphia, he...
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...
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...
William Daniel was born on remote Deal's Island in Somerset County, Maryland on January 24, 1826. He was educated locally and then matriculated at Dickinson with the class of 1848. While at the College he was a member of the Union Philosophical Society. Following graduation he studied law and...
When, in Fathers of the Revolution, Philip Guedalla described the American War for Independence as “a sedate rebellion…founded on equity and quotations from Blackstone,” he may well have had John Dickinson in mind. Erudite and reserved, Dickinson had the respect but not the love of his...
Born in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, Sumner Drayer studied at the Dickinson Preparatory School. He married Agnes Pettigrew on March 17, 1906. Among numerous business ventures, Drayer served as the president of the Voneiff-Drayer company, which operated the chain of Miss America Candy Stores....
George Duffield III was born on July 4, 1794 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. His father, George Duffield, Jr., served as the Comptroller General of Pennsylvania. The younger Duffield studied at the University of Pennsylvania, obtaining a degree in 1811. He then pursued a four-year course of...
Stephen Duncan was born in 1729 and came to prominence in Cumberland County with a successful law practice and a thriving business as a merchant. By 1780, he was noted in county tax records as the heaviest taxpayer in the county.
He also served as Treasurer of Cumberland County until he...
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...
Jesse Elliot was born in Maryland on July 14, 1782. He was nine years old when his father was killed in an Indian attack; soon after young Elliot moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he received his schooling. After studying law for a time, he was appointed midshipman in the United States Navy...
David Elliott was born in Sherman Valley, now in Perry County, to Thomas and Jane Holliday Elliott on February 6, 1787. Of Scots Irish heritage, he was raised on his parents' farm in a pious Presbyterian family. He was educated at home and in several neighborhood church schools, including that...
Clinton Fisk was born on December 8, 1828 to Benjamin Bigford and Lydia Aldrich Fisk in Western New York, near the Erie Canal. His parents moved to Michigan Territory while their son was an infant. The death of Benjamin Fisk plunged the family into poverty. Fisk eventually established himself as...
Mary Sharp Foucht was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1896 to her father, Alexander A. Sharp, an 1883 graduate of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and her mother, M. Jennie Beyard. She left Philadelphia for schooling at the Episcopal Girl's school of the College of Sisters of...
John Gibson was born on November 8, 1780 at what is now Gibson’s Mill, in the Shearman’s Valley of Perry County, Pennsylvania. His father, Colonel George Gibson, was one of the 637 killed at the defeat of Major General Arthur St. Clair on the Wabash in Indiana at the hands of the Miami Indians...
Francis Gurney was born in 1738 in Berks County, Pennsylvania. At the age 18 he enlisted in the Provincial Army. Gurney served during the French and Indian War, participating in the Canadian campaign, in action against the French West Indies islands, and in the capture of Guadeloupe.
...
Daniel Hartman Hastings was born near Lamar Township in Clinton County, Pennsylvania on February 26, 1849, the youngest of nine children of Scottish and Scots Irish immigrant parents. William Hastings and Sarah Hartman ran a struggling farm and were only able to send their son to a nearby select...
Alexander L. Hayes was born in Kent County, Delaware on March 7, 1793, the son of Manlove and Ziporrah Laws Hayes. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1812 and after graduation studied law with Henry Moore Ridgely of Dover, Delaware. Hayes passed the bar in...
Raphael Smead Hays was born on June 27, 1876 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the son of John Hays and Jane Van Ness Smead. A sixth generation Dickinsonian, his father was a Civil War veteran and a prominent lawyer who was president of the Carlisle Deposit Bank and of the Frog, Switch, and...
Edgar Rohrer Heckman was born on February 11, 1875 to Isaac and Annie T. Heckman, in Ennisville, Pennsylvania. He attended the Williamsport Dickinson Seminary and then enrolled at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in the fall of 1894. He quickly became an active student. By 1896, he...
Martin Herman was born on February 14, 1841 on the farm his German immigrant great-grandfather had cleared in 1771 near New Kingston, Pennsylvania. He was one of the six children of Martin and Elizabeth Wolford Herman. He prepared for college at the York County Academy under George Ruby and...
Francis Herron was born on June 28, 1774 near Shippensburg in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. He enrolled at nearby Dickinson College and graduated in 1794. He was determined on a career in the Presbyterian ministry, and so studied theology under his pastor Robert Cooper, and was licensed by...
John Hopper was born in 1923 in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, and attended Camp Hill High School. In 1941, he entered nearby Dickinson College in Carlisle as a member of the class of 1945. In his second semester, he volunteered to join the Army Air Corps at the encouragement of his roommate, Vincent...
John Fletcher Hurst was born near Salem, Maryland on August 17, 1834, the only son and second child of Elijah and Ann Catherine Colston Hurst. His father was a relatively prosperous slave holding farmer and local magistrate who was active in the Methodist Church. His mother died at thirty-four...
William Irvine was born of Scots-Irish parents in Fermanaugh, Ireland on November 3, 1741. He attended Trinity College in Dublin and afterwards studied medicine. He became a Royal Navy surgeon and served at sea in the Seven Years' War.
He settled in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1764 to...
