People

J. Lester Shipley was born in Baltimore, Maryland on June 21, 1838, the eldest son of Charles and Mary George Shipley. He was educated at a private classical school for boys in the city and then entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1860 in September, 1857. While at the College, he became one of the founding members of the Phi Kappa Psi chapter on campus and was elected to the Union Philosophical Society. Shipley gave up his original career idea of becoming a civil engineer when he felt called to the Methodist ministry; he received both his degree and his license to preach in the summer of 1860.

Born in Philadelphia on November 15, 1935, Wallace Siner entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as a member of the class of 1957 in September 1953. While at Dickinson, he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity but transferred at the end of his sophomore year.

Captain Wallace Siner died from small arms fire in Vietnam on January 5, 1966 while serving as an advisor to South Vietnamese troops in the Mekong Delta area. He left a widow and two sons. He was thirty years old.

Duke Slavens was born in Harrodsburg, Kentucky on August 5, 1840. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1859. As a student, Slavens became a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity and was elected to the Union Philosophical Society. He graduated with his class.

Slavens returned to Kentucky and began preaching in the Methodist Episcopal Church while still nineteen. He served as a pastor in Illinois and Arkansas, then moved west in 1886 to join the Nebraska Conference. There, Slavens ministered at LaSalle St. Beatrice, Palmyra, Bennet, Rising City, and Adam. He was also the presiding elder of the York District in the conference and a member of the conference's Standing Committee on Freedman's Aid and Southern Education.

Slavens married Mary Taylor in 1861, and the couple had six children. He retired in 1903 and took up residence in Odell, Nebraska. In January 1920, Slavens and his wife joined their married daughter in the milder climate of Bay City, Texas. Suffering badly from rheumatism, Duke Slavens died in Bay City on September 14, 1920. He was eighty years old.

Birth: November 4, 1830; Carlisle, Pennsylvania

Death: August 30, 1862 (age 32); Second Battle of Bull Run

Military Service: USA, 1861-62

Unit: 1st Company, PA Volunteers, 5th Artillery

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

John Radcliffe Smead was born in Carlisle in 1830, the son of Raphael C. and Sarah Radcliffe Smead. He entered the local Dickinson College as a junior in the fall of 1847, pursuing a partial course. He was a member of the Union Philosophical Society. The family was struck with tragedy when Smead’s father died in 1848 of yellow fever while returning from the Mexican War. Because of this, Smead withdrew from Dickinson to take a position in the Coast Survey until he was able to enter West Point in 1851 where his father had been an instructor. He was commissioned four years later and became an instructor in mathematics there.

In 1861 Smead helped to organize the first company of Pennsylvania Volunteers within half an hour of receiving Lincoln’s first call for troops. He enlisted in the 2nd Artillery but was commissioned as a captain of the 5th Artillery.

Smead led his company in the battles on the Peninsula before he was killed at the Second Bull Run on August 31, 1862, when he was struck in the head by a ball from a Confederate ten-pounder cannon. He was thirty-two years old. He was buried at Ashland Cemetery in Carlisle, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, USA.

Abraham Herr Smith was born in Manor Township near Millersville, Pennsylvania on March 7, 1815 the son of Jacob Smith, a millwright, and Elizabeth Herr. His parents died when he was eight years old and he and his sister spent the remainder of their childhood with their paternal grandmother. He received early schooling at the Lititz Academy and also studied surveying at the Franklin Institute in Lancaster. After a start at college life at Harrington College, Smith entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and joined the class of 1840. While at the College he was a member of the Union Philosophical Society. Following graduation with his class, Smith read law in Lancaster with John R. Montgomery and was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in October 1842.

He soon established a thriving practice in Lancaster and in 1842 was elected to the State house as a Whig, serving one term. He moved on to the State Senate in 1845 and served there until 1848. In state affairs he was particularly active in fiscal responsibility issues concerning the State debt, compulsory education, and the rights of married women. He also worked for the sale of public works. While in the State Senate he was defeated in an election for Speaker by one vote when, according to reports, he refused to vote for himself.

E. J. Smithers was born on July 14, 1828 in Dover, Delaware to Joseph and Sarah Ann Joyce Smithers. He was the brother-in-law of his half-cousin Nathaniel B. Smithers. With wealthy parents, Enoch was educated first at home and then entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1849. He left at the beginning of his senior year, however, to study law. Smithers read under Justice Gilpin of Delaware and was passed to the bar in that state in 1851. Although independently wealthy, he opened a law practice in Dover.

At the opening of the Civil War, Smithers served guarding railroads as first lieutenant of Company D in the First Regiment of Delaware Volunteers. This was a ninety-day unit that mustered in during May 1861 and out on August 17, 1861. When the regiment was called for three-year service, Smithers again enlisted and became company commander of Company D. Soon, however, President Lincoln removed him from the ranks to serve as U.S. Consul at the newly created legation on Chios, a Turkish-occupied island in the Aegean Sea, now the fifth largest island of Greece. The diplomatic posting of consul at Smyrna in Turkey followed.

Nathaniel Smithers was born in Dover, Delaware on October 8, 1818 the son of county prothonotary Nathaniel and Susan Fisher Barratt Smithers. He was educated at Ezra Scovell's school in Dover and then at the West Nottingham Academy under Rev. James Magraw. He gained his undergraduate degree at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania in 1836 and then, after funding his further education with teaching for a year in Maryland, entered the law department of Dickinson College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1840. He was admitted to the Dover bar and practiced for many years there, beginning in 1841.

Adam C. Snyder was born in Crab Bottom in Highland County, Virginia on March 26, 1834 to John and Elizabeth Halderman Snyder. He prepared for undergraduate studies at the Tuscarora Academy in Juniata County, Pennsylvania and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in September 1856 as a member of the class of 1859. Snyder enrolled at Dickinson with James J. Patterson, whose father had helped found Tuscarora. While at the College, Snyder was elected to the Belles Lettres Society, but he transferred to Washington College in Lexington, Virginia in 1857 to complete his education. Snyder studied law under Judge J. W. Brokenbough in Lexington, Virginia and was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1859. He opened a practice in Lewisburg, Virginia soon after.

Boyd Lee Spahr was born on April 18, 1880, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. There he grew up in the first block of South Market Street; his father was a local merchant. Young Spahr attended Dickinson College's preparatory school in nearby Carlisle, and then matriculated in the College proper with the class of 1900. Charming and athletic, he played tennis and joined Phi Kappa Sigma and the Belles Lettres Society. He was editor of The Dickinsonian and through other activities came to earn the nickname “Yodeler.”

Upon graduation he taught history for a year at the Preparatory School and published a collection of stories, Dickinson Doings. He then enrolled at the law school of the University of Pennsylvania, and he remained a Philadelphian the rest of his days.

Seemingly a figure from a Louis Auchincloss novel, Boyd Lee Spahr dominated Dickinson for much of the twentieth century. He served on the Board of Trustees from 1908 until his death in 1970; from 1931 to 1962 he was the Board’s president. Witty and urbane, he deftly governed the College, variously choosing and controlling trustees and presidents to shape Dickinson into an ideal he often declared, “to make Dickinson the best small liberal arts college.”

Jack Spangenberg was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on August 26, 1918. He attended Clarks Summit High School and the Keystone Academy before entering Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1939. Small in stature, but, according to his classmates, not in ideas, he served on the staff of the Dickinsonian and was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He graduated with his class and went straight on to the Dickinson School of Law.

Spangenburg was admitted to the Bar in November 1942 but by August 1943 he had completed Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was sent to Italy with an anti-tank unit in January 1944, and was slightly wounded at Cassino in April. Spangenburg returned to duty and was killed in action in Italy on July 10, 1944. He was twenty-five years old. On August 19, 1944, his son, John Michael, was born at home in Pennsylvania.

Carroll Spence was born at Mount Clare, the family home, on the outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland on February 22, 1818, the son of naval hero Robert Traill and Mary Clare Carroll Spence. He was educated privately and then in the law department at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in the class of 1842. He began his practice in his home state and was soon elected to the state house. In the election of 1852, he campaigned on behalf of Franklin Pierce and the Democrats in Maryland and was a presidential elector. In recognition of his efforts, Pierce, when elected, nominated him as the ninth United States minister to the Turkish Empire.

Spence took up his appointment in August 1853 and spent four years in Constantinople, negotiated the first treaty between Persia and the United States, visited much of the Middle East, and lobbied strenuously for the religious freedom of Turkish Christians and the rights of Muslims to convert. He, in fact, served as the president of the Auxiliary Bible Society of Constantinople.

Spence returned to private life in Baltimore after his term ended in 1858. He died on August 9, 1896 following a lingering illness. He was seventy-eight years old.

Joseph Spencer was born on March 21, 1790, in Beverly, Talbot County, Maryland. He was privately educated in Philadelphia, and became a teacher at the Episcopal Seminary there, being ordained in 1819. He left in 1820 to become the principal of Washington Academy in Somerset County, Maryland. Just two years later, Spencer accepted the position of professor of languages at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The Board of Trustee minutes of July 27, 1822 show Spencer was unanimously and officially elected with permission to be active in the ministry of the Episcopal Church of Carlisle during his tenure at the College.

Although Spencer spent eight years at Dickinson, rebellious students and fear for his personal safety marred his stay. For example, on February 25, 1825, he received an anonymous letter from a student who wrote in concern for Spencer's well being. The student stated that “Private conspiracies have been formed…against your life. Your body I must confess has 4 times in my own certain knowledge been rescued by the entreaties…of 2 or 3 of your friends, from severe flagellation.” The student cited the reason for these conspiracies and threats to Spencer's life as the professor's own doing, stating “your severity toward the students in general has caused it.”

(Simon) Walter Stauffer was born in Walkersville, Maryland on August 1888 the son of John Hanson and Ellen Nelson Stauffer. He attended area public schools, then Conway Hall Preparatory School in 1906 and 1907, and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He became a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon and graduated with the class of 1912.

After a time in Maryland as an insurance agent, he moved to York, Pennsylvania and began a career as an executive in the manufacture of lime and crushed stone. He, in fact, became president of the National Lime Association between 1936 and 1946. He was involved also in other concerns in banking, timber, and utilities. He was vice president and chairman of the executive committee of the York County Gas Company from 1950 to 1960, and a director of the Columbia Water Company. He was elected to the Eighty-third United States Congress in late 1952 as a Republican. He lost his next election in 1954 but regained his seat in the Eighty-fifth Congress in 1956, only to fail again in re-election in 1958.

John Stayman was born on September 28, 1823 in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. In the matriculation register of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he listed an Eliza L. Stayman under the title of Parent or Guardian. During his years at Dickinson, Stayman was a member of the Union Philosophical Society. He graduated with the Class of 1841.

In 1845, Stayman was an assistant in the Grammar School, but doubts about his teaching abilities led President John Durbin to remove him from the teaching staff. Stayman then turned to music, giving lessons in Carlisle and Harrisburg for ten years. In 1861, he returned to the College as an adjunct and then full professor of Latin and French. From 1867 to 1869 he was the professor of ancient languages, and was professor of philosophy and English literature from 1869 to 1874.

Joseph B. Stayman was born on July 18, 1832 in Hampden Township, Pennsylvania to Christian and Eliza Stayman. His father served for thirty-one years as a trustee of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The younger Stayman attended the preparatory school there and then entered the college proper in 1850 with the class of 1854. He withdrew before graduating and went into business in nearby Mechanicsburg.

Stayman maintained his business career until his retirement. He left it only to enlist very briefly as a private in the Pennsylvania Militia in a company his father raised during the September 1862 emergency during the Civil War. His brother Milton, who also attended Dickinson College with the class of 1856, joined with him in this same unit.

Stayman married Mary A. Shelley of Shiremanstown, Pennsylvania, and the couple had three sons and a daughter. One of these sons, Joseph Webster Stayman, graduated from Dickinson with the class of 1898. Joseph Benton Stayman died on July 14, 1901. He was four days short of his sixty-ninth birthday.

Kenneth Steck was born in York, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Dr. and Mrs. A. R. Steck. He attended York Collegiate Institute and the Dickinson Preparatory School before pursuing the Philosophical course at his hometown college as a member of the class of 1919. While at the College he was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity.

Steck withdrew in the spring of 1917 to join the army and was assigned to the Engineering Corps. He died of pneumonia on April 24, 1918 at his army camp near Anniston, Alabama. He was twenty-five years old and then a corporal. Steck was the first Dickinsonian and the first man from Carlisle to die in the First World War. His death was announced in the Dickinsonian on May 2, 1918. His name is featured on the First World War memorial on the square in Carlisle.

James Gordon Steese was born on January 21, 1882 in Mount Holly Springs, Pennsylvania, the son of James and Anna Shaeffer Steese. He was a 1902 graduate of nearby Carlisle's Dickinson College, although he had entered with the class of 1903. As a student, he was very active as a member of Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity and the Union Philosophical Society, as well as a number of dramatic and musical organizations. He also served as class historian for the class of 1903 and on the Microcosm board of editors until he was promoted to a higher class year. His three younger brothers John --- who later died in the service during the First World War --- Charles, and George also attended Dickinson but did not graduate.

After graduation, he attended the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. Graduating with honors in 1907, he was commissioned in the Army Corps of Engineers.

Steese was stationed in Panama working on the Isthmian Railroad and the Panama Canal Project between 1907 and 1912. Afterwards, he was assigned to various engineering projects in the United States with the Corps of Engineers. Just prior to World War I he was promoted to the rank of colonel. In 1919 he served as Assistant Chief of Engineers and Chief of a General Staff Section during a trip to post-World War I Europe. His service in Europe also gained him several foreign decorations.

John Steese was born June 27, 1884 in Mount Holly Springs, Pennsylvania, the younger son of James and Anna Shaeffer Steese. He prepared at the State Normal School in Millersville and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1904 in September 1900. His older brother James graduated from Dickinson in 1902. He, like his brother, was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity but left the College in 1902 and returned to Mount Holly. There he worked for the Mount Holly Paper Company.

Steese was commissioned and rose to the rank of captain in the Chemical War Service of the United States Army. He died of influenza at Camp Humphreys on October 2, 1918.

Henry Matthew Stephens was born in Neosho, Missouri, on January 4, 1868. His family moved to Renovo, Pennsylvania, where he attended high school. He further prepared for his undergraduate studies at the Dickinson-Williamsport Seminary. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1888 with the class of 1892.

An active and studious man, Stephens served in numerous positions of responsibility, including treasurer of the Athletic Association, class president in his freshman year and vice president in his senior year, physics laboratory assistant, business manager for the Microcosm and president of the Union Philosophical Society in his senior year. He also was a member of Phi Delta Theta, a leading member of the Chess Club, and sang first base in the Glee Club.

Stephens was perhaps the leading athlete of his class. He played for six years on the football team as an halfback and end, three as a student and three while he was an instructor. He ran with the track team and won the hundred yard dash at the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Sports meet.

John Stevens was a great-great-grandson of Adam Miller, the first Euro-American settler in the Shenandoah Valley. He was born at Harrisonburg, Virginia. Records show that he was in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the Dickinson Preparatory School, in 1840. Stevens graduated from Dickinson College in 1845; the next year he earned an M.D. from the University of Virginia. In 1848, Dickinson’s Board of Trustees awarded Stevens an M.A. “in curso” for his continuing medical study at the hospital in Philadelphia.

Sometime thereafter, Stevens moved to the hamlet of Vienna in Jackson Parish, Louisiana where he practiced medicine and acquired a plantation with slaves. He was elected to the Louisiana State Legislature, serving in both chambers. At the onset of the Civil War, Stevens enlisted as 1st Surgeon of the Louisiana 2nd Infantry. By war's end, he had been promoted to Medical Director of the Corps of General John B. Gordon, Army of Northern Virginia, C.S.A.

William Henry Stewart was born on May 8, 1818 to Joseph Fookes and Rachel Linthicum Stewart in Cambridge, Maryland. He attended Dickinson College preparatory grammar school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and went on to enter Dickinson College proper in 1837 with the class of 1841. He graduated four years later with his class, studied law and was admitted to the bar in his hometown of Cambridge in 1843.

In 1844, Stewart moved first to Iowa and then to Texas. He settled in Gonzales, Texas and seems to have adapted well to the new community; just four years after settling in, he was elected as town mayor. After one year as mayor, William Stewart's political career advanced as he was elected to a term in the Texas state legislature in 1849. He was to serve again in this position in 1860, when he voted in favor for the Ordinance of Secession of Texas in February 1861. When the Civil War broke out, Stewart joined the Confederate Army and served with the rank of major in the Quartermaster Corps attached to the Texas units serving with the Army of Northern Virginia. After the war, Stewart returned to Texas and moved from Gonzales to the port of Galveston on the Gulf Coast. Now a prominent Texas figure, he was a representative to the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1875 and was elected Judge of the District Court of the Tenth Judicial District of Texas in 1876. He sat on that bench until his death.

Harry Stock was born on September 3, 1871, in Carlisle, growing up on the corner of Bedford and Pomfret Streets. Stock graduated from the Carlisle High School in 1886 and attended the local Dickinson Preparatory School for one year before entering Dickinson College proper with the class of 1891. He was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity and rose to be elected president of the Belles Lettres Literary Society. Using his influence as the editor of the sports section of the Dickinsonian, he was instrumental in introducing tennis to the campus, to the extent that the first ever tennis tournament was held at the College on May 29, 1889. Stock won the tournament.

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dickinson in 1891 and taught in the public schools of Carlisle for two years. He then entered Gettysburg Theological Seminary, and earned his B.D. in 1896. He was offered the pastorate of the Second German Lutheran Church located at Bedford and Pomfret streets. Stock served the church for fifty years, during which time it changed its name to St. Paul's Lutheran. Dickinson awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1908.

Mulford Stough was born on May 1, 1888 in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania to William W. and Clara V. Bauer Stough. He attended Shippensburg State Teacher College from 1904 to 1907, before receiving his bachelor's degree from Washington and Lee University in 1911. He worked at the Old Thrush and Stough Carriage Works in Shippensburg and in his family's fruit orchards in Cumberland County before earning a master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1925. Upon graduation Stough came to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as an instructor of history, holding the position for one year until he was made associate professor in 1926. Finally, in September 1950, after almost a quarter century of service to the College, Stough was named as a full professor of history.

Theodore Strouse was born in Harrisburg in 1922 and graduated from John Harris High School in 1940. He then entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1944. He was editor-in-chief of the Dickinsonian and a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He left his studies during the last semester of his senior year in February 1943 to enlist in the Army Air Force.

Strouse trained as a bombardier/navigator in Texas and New Mexico, earning his commission in February 1944. He was assigned to the China-India theater, where he flew forty-one missions in B-25 bombers with the 10th Air Force, winning a Bronze Star and two Air Medals in the process. While flying to a rest area as a passenger over India, Strouse's transport aircraft crashed on July 11, 1945, killing him.

Birth: Hays Creek, Mississippi 

Death:  1865; Atlanta, Georgia

Military Service: CSA, 1861-65

Unit: Company A, 1st Light Artillery Regiment Mississippi 

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1862 non-graduate)

Isaac Sullivan came to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1857 as a student of the Grammar School from Hays’ Creek in Carroll County, Mississippi. After preparing at the school for a year, he entered Dickinson as a freshman in 1858. Sullivan was a member of the Belles Lettres Literary Society as well as the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. He did not receive his degree as he retired from the College after the spring semester of 1860.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Sullivan joined the Confederate States Army, eventually attaining the rank of major. He was killed at Atlanta in 1865.