Asbury Jones Clarke (1841-1907)

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 just a year after arriving at Dickinson, he graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors. From Dickinson, Clarke attended Albany Law School, where he received a degree in 1866. On September 17, 1872, he married Nannie McElhenney of Wheeling, West Virginia, and the couple had two children, Martha McElhenney and James Morgan. Like his father, James also attended Dickinson, graduating in 1900. A successful lawyer in Wheeling, Clarke served as a trustee of Dickinson from 1903 until his death in 1907.

In 1918, Clarke’s widow donated $50,000 to Dickinson in order to establish the Asbury Jones Clarke Chair of Latin Language and Literature. At the time, this was the largest single gift to the College by a living donor. Under the terms of the professorship, money from the endowment fund was used to pay the chosen professor's salary, with any surplus used to purchase equipment for the Latin department. In 1940, with the permission of Clarke’s son, the name of the chair was changed to the Asbury J. Clarke Chair of Classical Languages and Literature. Today, it exists as the Asbury J. Clarke Chair of Latin.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Trustee - Years of Service
1903-1907

Robert Coleman (1748-1825)

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 went to work for a merchant named Mark Biddle who was amazed by Coleman's impeccable penmanship. Also impressed by Coleman's legible writing and attention to detail, Curtis and Peter Grubb, two of Pennsylvania's most prominent iron masters, hired the young bookkeeper to oversee the records at their Hopewell Forge furnace. As an employee of the Grubbs, Coleman soon learned the daily activities of an iron master.

After only six months at Hopewell, he took the position of clerk at James Old’s Quittapahilla Forge furnace. On October 4, 1773, Coleman married Ann Old, the daughter of his employer, and soon after, he began leasing Salford Furnace near Norristown. With the outbreak of the American Revolution, Salford Furnace began manufacturing munitions for the Continental Army, and through the use of Hessian prisoners as laborers, Coleman turned a struggling ironworks into a profitable business. Even after the war, profits from Salford continued to grow thanks to Coleman's careful management and wise investment, and before long, he became a millionaire, reputedly Pennsylvania's first.

College Relationship
Trustee - Years of Service
1802-1825

James Wesley Colona (1872-1946)

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.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Honorary Degree - Year
1920
Trustee - Years of Service
1923-1946

John Andrew Jackson Creswell (1828-1891)

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.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Honorary Degree - Year
1871
Trustee - Years of Service
1865-1871; 1885-1891

William Daniel (1826-1897)

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 began practice in Maryland in 1851. He was elected to the state legislature in 1853 and, following attempts to bring local choice temperance laws to the floor, was reelected as a member of the American Party, moving to serve the Maryland Senate in 1858. He resigned before the year was out, moved to Baltimore, and became an avid anti-slavery Republican. During the Civil War, he took part in the Maryland constitutional convention on the emancipation of the slaves in the state.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Trustee - Years of Service
1864-1876; 1894-1897

John Dickinson (1732-1808)

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 contemporaries. It is helpful to keep in mind he was born the same year as George Washington and Joseph Haydn, two other deeply religious men of conservative temperaments and refined tastes.

Dickinson enjoyed the serene childhood of a southern plantation. His family were English, having settled in the seventeenth century in Maryland; Dickinson himself was born in Talbot County, on November 2, 1732. He grew up at Poplar Hall, the elegant brick mansion of his father, Judge Samuel Dickinson. There, surrounded by flat fields of wheat and tobacco, young Dickinson received private tutelage in Latin. Highly impressionable, he entertained himself with making a model of the bridge over the Rhine as found in Caesar’s Commentaries.

College Relationship
Trustee - Years of Service
1783-1808

Sumner Mathias Drayer (1872-1967)

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.

As a prominent businessman, he joined the Board of Trustees of Dickinson College in 1933. Over the years, he and his wife donated generously of their time and money to the college. Most notably, they contributed a large portion of the costs for the construction of the first women's dormitory built expressly for that purpose by the College. This building, Drayer Hall, bears their name in recognition of their substantial gift.

Though he never enrolled in the College, Sumner Drayer was awarded a degree by appointment as a member of the Class of 1902 for his service to the school. Agnes Pettigrew-Drayer died on January 31, 1954 and Sumner Drayer died on February 3, 1967 at the age of 95.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Trustee - Years of Service
1933-1967

George Duffield III (1794-1868)

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 study at the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in New York. His teacher and founder of the Seminary, John Mitchell Mason, would later become president of Dickinson in 1821. After completing his studies at the Seminary, Duffield was officially licensed to preach and entered the Presbyterian ministry on April 20, 1815. In September 1816, Duffield visited the town of Carlisle and was invited to preach at the First Presbyterian Church on the town square. His preaching style charmed the congregation, which uncharacteristically united in calling Duffield to lead their church. By accepting their call, Duffield achieved what his grandfather, the noted revivalist of the First Great Awakening, George Duffield, had failed to do during his time in Carlisle nearly fifty years before.

College Relationship
Trustee - Years of Service
1820-1833

Stephen Duncan (1729-1794)

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 resigned to take a seat in the Pennsylvania Assembly, from 1780 to 1783. At the founding of Dickinson College, of which he was a charter trustee, he took upon himself the unofficial task of college treasurer. Duncan served as a trustee of the College until his death.

He married Ann Fox (1732-1796) and the couple had nine children, including Robert Duncan. Several of their offspring married into prominent Carlisle families. Stephen Duncan died in Carlisle on March 30, 1794. His wife followed him that December.

College Relationship
Trustee - Years of Service
1783-1794

William Wilcox Edel (1894-1996)

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.

Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
President - Years of Service
1946-1959
Honorary Degree - Year
1935
Trustee - Years of Service
1946-1958

Jesse Duncan Elliot (1782-1845)

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 in April 1804 and was assigned to the U.S.S. Essex. He became an acting lieutenant on the U.S.S. Enterprise and in April 1810 was promoted to permanent rank of lieutenant. At the outbreak of the War of 1812, he was posted to Lake Erie where he captured two armed British brigs, burning one, ostensibly in retaliation for the earlier British capture of Detroit. Becoming second in command under Oliver Perry, and captain of the U.S.S. Niagara, he took what was to become a controversial part in the battle of Lake Erie. Although Perry spoke very highly of Elliot in his official report and Congress decorated him, rumors of Elliot's animosity against his commander and observations from both British and United States experts that Elliot had not backed Perry's boldness as he should created a simmering controversy. Various accusations and cross accusations in the press, including a defense by James Fenimore Cooper, resulted in Elliot challenging Perry to a duel and then facing a court-martial, a situation that the Cabinet desperately wished to avoid.

College Relationship
Trustee - Years of Service
1831-1833

David Elliott (1787-1874)

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 of the Reverend James Linn at Center Church. He entered Dickinson College in the junior class, and was graduated with the class of 1808, and with high honors and voted valedictorian by his peers.

He then studied theology for three years and was licensed as a pastor in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1881 and took his first church at Upper West Conocheague near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania in 1812 and there he remained until 1829. In the meantime, he founded the Franklin County Bible Society and was present at the founding of the American Bible Society in New York in 1816. He also served on the board of trustees of his alma mater between 1827 and 1829.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Trustee - Years of Service
1827-1829

Clinton Bowen Fisk (1828-1890)

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 a small banker in Coldwater, Michigan. In 1850, he married Jeannette Crippen.

Fisk’s bank was ruined in the Panic of 1857; however, by the start of the Civil War, he had re-established himself in St. Louis, Missouri. He initially served in the home guards, participating in the seizure of Camp Jackson in May 1861. During the summer of 1862, Fisk recruited and organized the 33rd Missouri Volunteers, and was promoted that November to brigadier general. He mustered out in 1865 as a major general.

After the war, Fisk was appointed to the Freedman’s Bureau as assistant commissioner of the Bureau of Refuges, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands for Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1866, he opened a school for freedmen in an abandoned army barracks in Nashville, Tennessee. A year later the institution was chartered as Fisk University.

Fisk returned to banking in New York until 1874 when he was appointed to the Board of Indian Commissioners. He was president of the board from 1881 until 1890. In 1882 Fisk was appointed as a trustee of Dickinson College. He is credited with finding George Reed to replace James McCauley as president of the college.

College Relationship
Trustee - Years of Service
1882-1890

Mary Sharp Foucht (1896-1974)

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 Bethany, in Topeka, Kansas, and continued her studies in that state, at Washburn College in Topeka.

She remained in Kansas after her graduation and rose in the field of education to become the Assistant Secretary for the Kansas State Board of Education. After completing her work on the Board of Education, she became a partner in the John G Laforge Company, an investment securities concern in Chicago, Illinois. For the remainder of her life she lived in Chicago, Illinois, where she raised a family with her husband, Proctor Dutton Foucht.

Mary Sharp Foucht holds the distinction of being the first woman elected to the Dickinson College Board of Trustees. She was named in 1954 under the presidency of William Edel. In this, she received substantial support and encouragement of the women of the Mary Dickinson Club, who valued her financial contributions to the College. In memory of her father, Dr. Alexander A. Sharp, class of 1883, she had made possible the creation of the Sharp Room in the Spahr Library, and also the Sharp Memorial Lounge located in Drayer Hall. She also started the Foucht Fund, which helped the College Library purchase books.

College Relationship
Trustee - Years of Service
1954-1974

John Bannister Gibson (1780-1853)

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 on November 4, 1791. His widow, Anne West Gibson, was left to farm and care for their young children, of whom John was the youngest. John Gibson entered Dickinson Grammar School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1795, and joined the College proper with the Class of 1798. Before he graduated, however, he left to study law under Judge Thomas Duncan in Carlisle and was admitted to the Bar of Cumberland County on March 8, 1803.

Gibson practiced law briefly in Carlisle, before moving first to Beaver, Pennsylvania and then to Hagerstown, Maryland. After a few unsatisfactory years in Maryland, he returned to his house on East High Street in Carlisle and remained a residsent for the rest of his life, and resumed his law practice. In 1810 he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, serving two terms. On July 16, 1813, he was appointed president judge of the 11th Judicial District. For the next three years, Gibson worked in the Court of Common Pleas of Tioga, Bradford, Susquehanna, and Luzerne Counties.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Trustee - Years of Service
1816-1829

Francis Gurney (1738-1815)

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.

After the war, Gurney returned to Philadelphia where he began his career as a merchant. During the American Revolution, he donated heavily to the cause both monetarily and in military service. He served as a captain with the Grenadier Company, 3rd Regiment, Philadelphia Militia, and was later promoted to lieutenant colonel. He resigned his commission on October 22, 1777 after a failure to receive an expected promotion. Gurney served throughout the remainder of the war and its aftermath in civilian offices.

During the Whiskey Rebellion his military services were again called upon. For three months, Gurney led 600 militia against rebelling farmers in western Pennsylvania. In 1799, he was promoted to brigadier general.

In addition to his other civic and military duties, Gurney served on the Board of Trustees of Dickinson College from 1798 until his death. He was often entrusted with College business in Philadelphia and Washington, D. C. Francis Gurney died on May 25, 1815.

College Relationship
Trustee - Years of Service
1798-1815

Daniel Hartman Hastings (1849-1903)

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 school. Their son took full advantage in a remarkable intellectual rise from fourteen year old assistant teacher, to eighteen year old principal of the local high school. At the same time, he studied Latin and Greek at the nearby Bellefonte Academy, served as an assistant editor of education with the local Bellefonte National, and also studied law. He had risen to superintendent of schools in Bellefonte before, in 1875, he passed the Centre County bar and began a full time practice of law.

College Relationship
Honorary Degree - Year
1895
Trustee - Years of Service
1893-1903

Alexander Laws Hayes (1793-1875)

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 Delaware in 1815 and began practice in the state.

Continuing to practice law, Hayes moved to Philadelphia in 1821 and then to Reading, Pennsylvania in 1822. In 1827, he relocated again to Lancaster when he was appointed an assistant judge of the District Court of Lancaster and York Counties. Hayes was made president judge of that court in 1833. He served another fifteen years before retiring in 1849 to concentrate on his Lancaster practice and to venture into business, notably as the president of the Conestoga Steam Mill Company. Hayes was also very active in civic affairs; he served as the president of the board of school directors in Lancaster and as a trustee of the Millersville Normal School, today's Millersville University. He also served on the board of trustees for Dickinson College between 1837 and 1841. In 1854, he was persuaded to once again sit on the judge's bench, this time for Lancaster, and being reelected regularly, served until 1874.

Hayes was married, and he and his wife had several daughters. Alexander Laws Hayes died in 1875 in Lancaster. He was eighty-three years old.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Trustee - Years of Service
1837-1841

Raphael Smead Hays (1875-1954)

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 Manufacturing Company, where he was also cofounder and chairman of the board. Raphael attended Dickinson College Preparatory School before entering the College in 1890. During his college years he focused on the study of classical arts, especially in Greek and Latin. He was an avid tennis player, worked on the Microcosm, and was a member of Sigma Chi fraternity. He graduated from Dickinson College in 1894 with a bachelor of arts degree.

Upon graduation, Hays acted for a time as secretary to President George Reed. Following a short stay in Philadelphia working for the E. T. Smith Company, he returned home to work for his father at Frog and Switch. Beginning in an entry-level position, he quickly rose through the ranks, eventually becoming superintendent and later vice president. He is credited with introducing the steel foundry to the company, which allowed it to modernize and produce a considerably greater profit. Upon his father's death he took over complete control of Frog and Switch.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Trustee - Years of Service
1931-1954

Edgar Rohrer Heckman (1875-1948)

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 was the recording secretary of the Belles Lettres Literary Society and was selected as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, focusing his academics in Latin and history. He was also a successful athlete -- as a junior he stood at 5' 11" and 185 pounds -- and played four years on the football team. He was captain of his class baseball team, and an enthusiastic gymnast. Nicknamed "Heck," he also became a member of the fraternity Phi Kappa Sigma.

Heckman received his A.B. in 1897 and took a post for three years as a teacher of Latin and history at the Dickinson Preparatory School. In 1900 he became the Methodist pastor at Town Hill, Pennsylvania. This heralded a series of appointments which included district superintendent of the Harrisburg area and minister to the Allison Church in Carlisle from 1929 to 1932 and the Pennsylvania State College. His last post before his retirement was at the Methodist Home for the Aged in Tyrone, Pennsylvania from 1937 to 1947. He received an honorary D.D. from Dickinson in 1917.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Honorary Degree - Year
1917
Trustee - Years of Service
1920-1948

Martin Christian Herman (1841-1896)

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 entered the class of 1862 at Dickinson College in September 1858. His brother, David Herman, was a member of the class of 1865. While at the College, Martin was a member of Phi Kappa Psi and active in the Belles Lettres Society, for whom he was chosen to deliver the 76th anniversary oration in 1862; he also received the Silver Junior Prize Medal for oratory the year before. He graduated with his class and entered the study of law with William Miller of Carlisle.

Herman was called to the Cumberland County bar in January 1864 and opened a practice in Carlisle. While still in his thirties, he was elected as the president judge of the Ninth Judicial District of Pennsylvania taking office in January 1874 and serving till 1884. After this he continued his lucrative practice in Carlisle.

Martin Herman married Josie Adair of Carlisle on June 5, 1873 and the couple had four children. He also served a term on the board of trustees of Dickinson from 1877 to 1878. In late 1895 he suffered a stroke while in court and died at home in Carlisle after a lingering illness on January 18, 1896. He was fifty-five years old.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Trustee - Years of Service
1877-1878

Francis Herron (1774-1860)

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 the Carlisle Presbytery in October 1797.

His immediate work began as a missionary, moving through Pittsburgh and then west through the backwoods of Ohio as far as present day Chillocothe. He also made a name for himself by camping several nights with the Native Americans, who were then numerous around what is today the town of Marietta, Ohio. Despite being asked to lead several congregations in the west, Herron eventually was installed as pastor of the Rock Spring Church, closer to his home, in April 1800. After ten years of service in Cumberland County, he did return, however, as he was appointed as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh in June 1811. The remainder of his service was spent in that city.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Trustee - Years of Service
1803-1816

John D. Hopper (1923-1996)

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 Schafmeister. He served as a fighter pilot in the European theater of war. He returned in 1945 as a sophomore and graduated in 1948. He was well involved in the College, being a member of many organizations, such as the Beta Theta Phi fraternity, Omicron Delta Kappa honors society, and Raven's Claw. He was also an outstanding varsity basketball player, and in 1972 was inducted into the Dickinson Sports Hall of Fame.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Faculty - Years of Service
1951-1952
Trustee - Years of Service
1970-1993

John Fletcher Hurst (1834-1903)

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 in 1841, when John was seven years old. He was educated at home, then at the local common school and the nearby Cambridge Academy. He saw President Jesse Peck of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania preach near his home and was invited to attend the College in the fall. He did so, entering in September 1850 with the thirty-six member class of 1854. He became a member of the Union Philosophical Society almost immediately and, though not a great orator, later served in most of its executive offices. Already a serious and devout young man, "Johnnie Hurst" was already publishing small writings in various religious magazines before the end of his freshman year, and soon gained a reputation for gentle dignity and hard work. He graduated with twenty others of his class, not with honors but in the "First Section."

Alumnus/Alumna Class Year
Honorary Degree - Year
1866; 1880
Faculty - Years of Service
1889-1891
Trustee - Years of Service
1888-1891

William Irvine (1741-1804)

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 practice medicine. When the Revolutionary War broke out he raised the 7th Pennsylvania Regiment and participated in the invasion of Canada where he was captured at Three Rivers. He was exchanged in 1778 and fought at the Battle of Monmouth. Promoted to Brigadier General, he was given command of the western frontier area and was headquartered at Fort Pitt where he served until the end of the war.

After the establishment of the new government, Irvine served in various posts, many involving the distribution of land, and he attended the Continental Congress in 1787. He later represented Cumberland County in the U.S. Congress and commanded Pennsylvania troops in the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion. His final post was as superintendent of military stores in Philadelphia.

Irvine was one of the original nine trustees to whom the deed for the building of a school in Carlisle had been entrusted. When the Dickinson College charter was passed in the Legislature, six of the nine became trustees of the College. Irvine was one of these and he served until his death.

During his early days in Carlisle, he married Anne Callender. He died in Philadelphia on July 29, 1804.

College Relationship
Trustee - Years of Service
1788-1803