Charles Collins (1813-1875)

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.

College Relationship
President - Years of Service
1852-1860
Honorary Degree - Year
1851

John Owings Cockey, Jr. (1928-1944)

John Cockey was from Glyndon, Maryland and was the 1936 class president of Franklin High School in Reisterstown, Maryland. He entered Dickinson College that autumn. While at the College he was a varsity soccer player and a member of Phi Kappa Sigma, Skull and Key, and Raven's Claw. He graduated with his class in June 1940 and enrolled at Duke University Law School.

He enlisted in the Army Air Forces in June, 1941 and a month after Pearl Harbor he had already earned his pilot's wings and a commission at Kelly Field in Texas. He became a basic flying instructor in Kansas and in Texas as the Air Corps grew quickly. After sixteen months of this duty, he trained at the heavy bomber school in Fort Worth, Texas, on Liberators. He was promoted and assigned to the Eight Air Force in England in January, 1944, and promoted again in July, 1944.

Cockey was killed in a flying accident over the small village of Bodney, a few miles west of Norwich in East Anglia on September 7, 1944, when he was a squadron commander and a major. Eleven days later, his fellow pledge in the eight man Phi Kappa class of 1940, John Ell, was killed in action in Holland.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

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

Daniel Mountjoy Cloud (1837-1871)

Birth: June 29, 1837; Warren County, Virginia

Death: May 31, 1871 (age 34); Vicksburg, Mississippi

 Military Service: CSA, 1861-65

 Unit: 7th Virginia Cavalry; Secret Service

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1858)

Daniel Cloud was born on June 29, 1837 in Warren County, Virginia. He entered Dickinson College, where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity and the Belles Lettres Literary Society. He graduated with the class of 1858. From 1858 to 1859 Cloud taught at Charlotte Hall, Maryland, and from 1859 to 1860 he taught at Salina, Alabama. In 1860, he accepted a position at the Biblical Institute in Conrad, New Hampshire.

With the start of the Civil War, Cloud returned to Virginia where he joined the 7th Virginia Cavalry under Captain Ashby. After being promoted to captain in 1863, he transferred to the Secret Service of the Confederacy. Under the command of his college roommate, Captain Thomas N. Conrad, Cloud helped to coordinate Confederate spies in Washington, D. C. and the transportation of intelligence to Richmond. At one point Cloud and Conrad planned to abduct President Lincoln, but their plans fell through.

After the war, Cloud became superintendent of public schools in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1865. He was later admitted to the Bar in Vicksburg, where he remained for the rest of his life. Daniel Mountjoy Cloud died on May 31, 1871.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

John "Jack" R. Cliffe (1929-1951)

Born in April, 1929 in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, this U.S. Navy Air cadet was killed on December 4, 1951 at Cabaniss Field near Corpus Christi, Texas, when his Bearcat fighter aircraft went into a spin and crashed beside a runway. He was twenty-two years old, had enlisted in September 1950, and was within three weeks of receiving his fighter pilot's wings.

While at Dickinson he was a popular member of the varsity swim team and Phi Delta Theta. Called "Long John" because of his six foot three inch height, John Cliffe graduated with the class of 1950.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

Charles Dexter Cleveland (1802-1869)

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.

College Relationship
Honorary Degree - Year
1866
Faculty - Years of Service
1830-1832

Joseph Clemens (1862-1936)

Joseph Clemens was born on December 9, 1862, in the rugged county of Cornwall in England. His family of Cornish iron miners migrated to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and then to Eichelberger, Pennsylvania. He was the only one of five brothers who did not follow the family tradition and become a miner.

In 1890, at the age of 28, Clemens entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania after preparation at the Williamsport Seminary. At Dickinson, he pursued the philosophical course and studied to be a missionary. While at Dickinson, he was a charter member of the Sigma Chi chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. A very hard-working student, he was the treasurer for the Union Philosophical Society and the treasurer of the Dickinson Prohibition Club. He also played in the College orchestra and sang in the College choir, at the same time serving as a member of the Missionary committee of the college Y.M.C.A. and as class poet.

After graduation in 1894, Clemens was a pastor for the Central Pennsylvania Methodist Episcopal Conference; until 1900 he served as circuit minister for such towns as Mont Alto, Rouzerville, and Blue Rock. In 1896 he married Mary Knapp Strong, whom he had met at the Williamsport Seminary. The following year he earned his master's degree in cursu from Dickinson.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

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

Jeremiah Chamberlain (1794-1851)

Jeremiah Chamberlain was born on January 5, 1794, the son of a Revolutionary War colonel named James Chamberlain. Young Jeremiah grew up at "Swift Run," the family farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He prepared at a classical school in York County before attending Dickinson College, where he graduated in 1814. In 1817 he was a member of the first graduating class of Princeton Theological Seminary, and upon his return to Carlisle, was ordained by the Carlisle Presbytery. Chamberlain spent the next year performing missionary work in the Southwest. He returned to Pennsylvania in 1818 and began preaching in Bedford, Pennsylvania.

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year

Rudolphus N. Cecil (c.1838-1864)

Birth: December 31, 1836

 Death: June 22, 1864 (age 28); Richmond, Virginia; Hollywood Cemetery

 Military Service: CSA, 1861-64

 Unit: Company K, Second Division

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1858 non-graduate)

Rudolphus Cecil was prepared at the Dickinson Grammar School for the year 1853-1854 and entered the College proper the following year with the class of 1858. Cecil joined the Belles Lettres Society, but eventually withdrew from the College. He moved to Anne Arundel County, Maryland and became a farmer in Millersville where he married Elizabeth Gosnell in January of 1861 with whom he has one son, William Edwin Cecil.

Cecil enlisted in the Maryland unit that eventually became Company K, First Virginia Cavalry of the Confederate States Army at Romney as a private on July 10, 1861. A promotion to 3rd lieutenant came less than a year later on April 23, 1862. Cecil was wounded in the left foot at Kennon’s Landing on May 24, 1864; the foot had to be amputated at a Richmond hospital, but Cecil nevertheless died of his wounds on June 22. He was buried in the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.

Cecil is believed to have been a favorite of General Fitzhugh Lee, as Lee often made special mention of Cecil's bravery in his official reports, remarking on his death that he was "an officer possessing a daring bravery I have rarely seen equaled."

College Relationship
Alumnus/Alumna Class Year