People

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.

Wellington Parlin was born in Des Moines, Iowa on January 19, 1899. He graduated from Simpson College in 1921 with a bachelor of arts degree and continued at the University of Iowa where he earned his master of sciences degree in 1922. He taught at Emory University as an instructor in physics between 1923 and 1926, before attending Johns Hopkins University to earn his doctorate in 1929.

Parlin began his career at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1930 as an associate professor of physics. The College promoted him to full professor in 1934. During his time at the College, Parlin conducted research in his main interest, the properties of light. In 1935, he invented an intensitometer, a machine to give variable and known intensities of light without changing the color values. He also developed a set of color filters, which were used to determine the degree of color blindness.

In 1948, Parlin was appointed chair of the physics department. He was also a faculty advisor to the Mohler Scientific Club and the Phi Beta Kappa honorary society. In 1955, he retired from the College with the status of professor emeritus of physics.

Parlin was a veteran of both the First and Second World War. He was married and had four daughters. Wellington Amos Parlin died on September 8, 1996, at the age of 97.

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.

Gaylord Patterson was born in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania on August 18, 1866. He attended Allegheny College but graduated in 1888 from Ohio Wesleyan University. He then earned his Ph.D. from Yale and other degrees from the Boston University School of Theology and Harvard. He then embarked upon a fourteen year ministry in the service of the Methodist church. In 1907, he re-entered university life, teaching history, economics, and social science at Williamette University; he also served as its dean.

Patterson arrived at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1915 as a professor of economics and sociology. He was the only man to teach economics, sociology, and political science at the College when he came, but as the size of the staff increased he was able to concentrate more on his chosen field of sociology. From 1930 to the time of his retirement in 1939, he served as professor of sociology. He also was dean of the junior class from 1928 to 1930. Ill heath and weakness as a result of asthma often hampered his work at the College; in 1931 he was forced to take a temporary leave of absence. He retired in 1940 as professor emeritus of sociology.

He was married in 1900 to Millicent Louise Webber and they had a daughter, Louise, who graduated from Dickinson in 1927. Gaylord Hawkins Patterson died at the age of 74 on June 5, 1940.

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.

Jesse Truesdell Peck, the youngest of ten children of Luther Peck, was born on April 4, 1811 on a farm in Middlefield, Otsego County, New York. He was educated at Cazenovia Seminary and became a minister in the Methodist Church. He married Persis Wing on October 13, 1831, and in the following year he joined the Oneida Conference. In 1837, Peck became the head of the Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary in New York. He moved on to head the Troy Conference Academy in Poultney, Vermont. In 1848, thanks to his fine record and his strong dedication to the Methodism, Peck was chosen to be the tenth president of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, despite having no formal college education himself.

On August 8, 1874, George Wesley Pedlow was born in Manistee, Michigan. He attended public schools in Upland, Pennsylvania and Dickinson Preparatory School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania before enrolling in the College proper. At Dickinson, he was a member of Sigma Chi and captain of the football team in 1900.

In 1901, Pedlow graduated from Dickinson, and shortly after, he joined the 6th Pennsylvania Volunteers to fight in the Spanish-American War, though the conflict was resolved before his unit arrived in Cuba. After the War, he returned to Pennsylvania, where he served as principal at Dauphin High School for two years. From Dauphin, he went to Staunton Military Academy as an instructor. Five years later he left Staunton and returned to his hometown of Upland to serve as principal at the high school there for two years. In 1910, he left for a teaching position at Chester High School. At Chester High School, Pedlow finally found a more permanent position, serving as a teacher there until 1924, and then as principal from 1924 to 1941.

Throughout his life, Pedlow valued the education that he had received at Dickinson, and as an educator in the Chester School District, he was responsible for directing many students to the College. In 1942, he received an honorary Master of Arts degree from his alma mater.

Richard Alexander Fullerton Penrose was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the second son of Charles and Valeria Fullerton Biddle Penrose on March 24, 1827; his elder brother was William McFunn Penrose. He was educated at the local Dickinson Grammar School and entered Dickinson College proper in 1842, graduating with the class of 1846. He went on to the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and received his medical degree in March 1849.

Birth: March 10, 1832; Sackett's Harbor, New York,

Death:  August 29, 1903 (age 71); Salt Lake City, Utah

Military Service: USA, 1861-96

Unit: 3rd Infantry of the Regular Army,  15th Infantry New Jersey, 1st Brigade of 6th Corps 1st Division, 3rd United States Infantry

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1849 non-graduate)

William McFunn Penrose, the eldest son of Charles Bingham and Valeria Fullerton Biddle Penrose, was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on March 29, 1825; Richard Alexander Fullerton Penrose was his younger brother. Their father was a well-known lawyer in the town. In 1840, William entered the local Dickinson College with the class of 1844. He won election to the Belles Lettres Society and graduated with his class. He then studied law, was admitted to the Carlisle bar in 1844, and immediately began a practice in Cumberland County.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, the six foot tall Penrose mustered in with what was to become the Sixth Reserves, 35th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers and was elected as a lieutenant-colonel when the unit was organized at Harrisburg in June 1861. The 35th was accepted into federal service on July 27, five days after moving to Camp Tenallytown; it wintered at Camp Pierpoint near Langley, Virginia. Penrose, as temporary commander of the regiment, saw action and was commended after the battle of Dranesville on December 20, 1861 for his coolness in command and the 35th Regiment's pursuit of the enemy. Camp Pierpoint, unfortunately, was a poorly drained establishment that brought widespread sickness, mostly probably malaria, to the regiment, including Penrose. With the regrets of his brigade commander, General Ord, Penrose resigned his commission due to illness early in 1862 and returned to Carlisle.

John Christian Pflaum was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 13, 1903. After graduating from high school in 1921, Pflaum earned both his bachelor’s degree in economics (1925) and his master’s degree in history (1929) from the University of Pennsylvania. Opting to teach instead of following his original intention of practicing law, he began teaching at a West Virginia high school while earning his master’s degree. He was a member of the faculty of Temple University from 1926 until 1933, and then again from 1938 until 1943, instructing at his alma mater during the interim. In the days just prior to the Second World War, Pflaum was traveling and studying in Europe when he was caught in the turmoil of the German invasion of Poland and the subsequent chaos it caused; he would later use these experiences to illustrate the human side of the war to many generations of his students. During the war, Pflaum served as an instructor at the Western Reserve Academy and as supervisor of the Signal Corps trainees at Princeton, Rutgers, Lafayette, and Temple.

Ralph Pierce was born in Franklin County, New York at the town of Moira on April 11, 1827. He was the son of Methodist preacher Hiram Pierce and his wife, Sarah Pierce. The younger Pierce prepared for college locally and enrolled at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1848. While at the college, he was elected to the Belles Lettres Society. He graduated with his class in the summer of 1852 and immediately took up a teaching position as the head of the Cassville Academy in Blair County, Pennsylvania.

In 1854, Pierce began a short term as principal of Metropolitan Institute in Washington D.C. He then took up duties as a Methodist pastor under the Black River Conference, first in his home town of Moira and then in Torrington, New York. In 1856, the founder of Methodist activities in India, William Butler, invited Pierce to join the effort. Pierce sailed in early 1857 and spent more than six years on the sub-continent, largely in Lucknow and Bareilly in north central India. His early years of service must have been adventurous, since the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857 and 1858 was largely centered in that region.

Though never an employee of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Noah Pinkney was one of its most famous names for forty years. Known to Dickinson students as "Pink" or "Uncle Noah" for all of that time, Pinckney was born a slave in Frederick County, Maryland on December 31, 1846. During the war he became "contraband" and in 1863, he travelled to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to enlist in the Union Army. He served under General Butler and, according to the Dickinsonian, was present at the Appomattox Court House in April 1865 when General Lee surrendered.

Following the war he made his home in Harrisburg where he lived until he moved to Carlisle in 1884. From the next twenty years, "Pink" sold pretzels, sandwiches, ice cream, cakes, and pies from under the steps of East College and also made nightly rounds of the undergraduate rooms. On the coldest of winter days he would sell his treats from his three room house on West Street. Students would listen for his common line of "Fine as silk, sah. Dickinson sandwitches, fine as silk." In 1894, he was forbidden to sell his treats on campus, and after a time serving students from outside of the East College gate, he suspended his operations for a few months. By the next spring, though, his catering had once again recommenced from his home on 137 North West Street. The May 1895 issue of the Dickinsonian celebrated the fact that "Once more is heard, the old, familiar cry, 'Let's go to Pinkney's'".

Arthur Platt was born on July 14, 1907 on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, where his parents were medical missionaries. He attended the Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts and graduated in 1924. He went on to Trinity College were he received a degree in chemistry and mathematics in 1928. After college Platt attended the Teacher's College, Columbia University, for his master's degree which he earned in 1935. He later took classes in educational administration at Harvard University's graduate school.

In 1928, Platt returned to the Mount Hermon School as a teacher. His tenure there lasted more than thirty years, from 1928 to 1959. He began as a teacher of mathematics and by 1934 he was the dean of students. He was the Director of Studies from 1942 to 1959; during this tenure he also served as the College counselor (1942-1945) and the assistant headmaster (1945-1959). He then became the Executive Assistant to the President and Chief Fiscal Officer and Clerk of the Board of Trustees. In this capacity, he supervised the reorganization of the corporation's internal management policies and practices. The president of the Northfield Schools at this time was Howard Rubendall.

Esther Popel was born on July 16, 1896 to Joseph Gibbs and Helen King Anderson Popel of Harrisburg, PA. Esther had an older sister, Helen, and a younger brother, Samuel. The 1900 census indicates that her father was a letter carrier and the family lived at 703 State St. According to Esther’s memories, there had been Popels in Harrisburg since 1826 when her paternal grandfather and his free-born parents settled there.

Esther graduated from Central High School in Harrisburg in 1915 and enrolled at Dickinson the following fall. She was the first African American woman to enroll at the college. Esther commuted to campus daily, as Dickinson did not permit African Americans to live on campus at the time. Esther elected to pursue the Latin Scientific curriculum, which emphasized modern languages. She studied French, German, Latin, and Spanish. While at Dickinson, Esther received the 1919 John Patton Memorial Prize, an academic award granted annually to one student from each class.

Esther graduated from Dickinson in 1919. Her academic achievements earned her the distinction of being initiated into the national academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa.