J. Herman Bosler was born in Silver Spring, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania on December 14, 1830. He was one of eight children of Abraham and Eliza Herman Bosler, an already distinguished county family active in farming, milling, and distilling. He attended the Cumberland Academy in New Kingston at seventeen and then went on to Dickinson College, entering in 1850 into the class of 1854 with his younger brother James Williamson Bosler. Neither brother completed their course, however, with John Herman withdrawing in 1851 to join his father's business.

James Bosler was born on April 4, 1833 to Abraham and Eliza Herman Bosler in Silver Spring, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. He attended the Cumberland Academy at New Kingston, Pennsylvania before entering the nearby Dickinson College as a member of the class of 1854 along with his older brother John Herman Bosler. Neither brother finished their degrees and James Bosler withdrew from the College during his junior year and moved west.

From 1852 to 1854, Bosler taught school in Moultrie, Columbiana County, Ohio, where he also built his first store. After the store was destroyed by fire, Bosler moved to Virginia. In Wheeling, Virginia, he was admitted to the Bar, but the life of a lawyer did not suit him. Moving further west in 1855, Bosler partnered with Charles E. Hedges in Sioux City, Iowa in the real estate business. Together they established the Sioux City Bank under the name Bosler & Hedges. Bosler soon expanded his business interests into the growing cattle market, where he made his fortune. He served a brief term in the Iowa State Legislature, before returning to Carlisle in 1866.

Abram Bosler was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on September 5, 1884, the son of George Morris Bosler. In 1901, he graduated from the Dickinson Preparatory School, and attended the local Dickinson College as a member of the class of 1905. During his time at the college, Bosler was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and took the science course. He graduated with his class in the early summer of 1905.

After a few months in Wyoming with the family cattle business, he returned to succeed his father as director of the Carlisle Deposit Bank and eventually became its president. He was also involved with the Fidelity and Trust Company of Baltimore. Bosler also served as president of the Carlisle Shoe Company until his retirement in 1929. As a member of perhaps the leading family in Carlisle, he followed extensive civic activities including membership on the board of the Carlisle Hospital and of the Carlisle Country Club. He also served on the Board of Trustees of Dickinson College from 1914 until 1930. He was a Republican and an elected member and president of the city council. He was an active Mason and a member of the St. John's Episcopal Church in Carlisle.

Roscoe Bonisteel was born in Canada on December 23, 1888 to Milton Fremont and Francis Whyte Bonisteel in Sidney Crossing, Ontario. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1908 as a member of the class of 1912. Before graduating, Bonisteel transferred to the University of Michigan where he received his law degree in 1912.

On September 12, 1914, he married Lillian Coleman Randoph. After serving as a Captain in the United States Army Air Service during the First World War, Bonisteel moved with his young wife to Ann Arbor, Michigan. There he began his career as a lawyer, serving as city attorney from 1921 to 1928. In addition to his professional commitments, Bonisteel served as a trustee for Wayne State University and as a regent for the University of Michigan. He supported the Historical Society of Michigan, serving as a trustee for a number of years.

In 1952, Dickinson College awarded Bonisteel an honorary doctor of laws degree. Seven years later, he was elected to the Board of Trustees. During his years of service to the college, Bonisteel donated funds for a planetarium and observatory, and supported the Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections. Roscoe Osmond Bonisteel died on February 25, 1972.

A member of the Dickinson College Board of Trustees from 1833 until 1835, Thomas Emerson Bond, Sr. was born in Baltimore, Maryland in February 1782. He studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and later earned his M.D. from the University of Maryland. Declining to teach at that institution, he began a private medical practice. He later became the first President of the Board of Visitors of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery. Bond’s days as a physician were limited, however, as he obtained his preacher's license shortly thereafter. He was actively involved in the establishment of the Methodist Episcopal church and is best known for his work as a minister and writer.

Bond’s flair for writing led to the publication of many religious works including An Appeal to the Methodists, in 1827; occasionally his articles were also published in the Methodist Quarterly. In support of the church, he edited The Itinerant, a Baltimore newspaper. From 1840 to 1848, and again from 1852 until his death in 1856, Bond held the position of editor of the Christian Advocate and Journal in New York City, a position he shared with his son for a number of years. His son, Thomas Emerson Bond, Jr., gained fame as one of the founders of modern dental pathology, renown for his book A Practical Treatise on Dental Medicine, the first textbook on dental pathology. Thomas Emerson Bond, Sr. died on March 14, 1856 in New York City.

Gustavus C. Bird was born in West River, Maryland on January 4, 1839 to Benjamin Lee and Emily Eversfield Duvall Bird. His father was a prominent physician in the county. Bird entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1857. He was a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity and was elected to the Belles Lettres Society. After graduation in the summer of 1857, Bird attended theological seminary in Alexandria, Virginia.

After his ordination, Bird took up a pastorate in Centreville, Maryland. He moved on to Grace Church in Honesdale, Pennsylvania and then was assistant rector at the Emmanuel Church in Baltimore. In 1872 Bird settled as the rector of St. Martin's Protestant Episcopal Church in Marcus Hook on the Delaware River, which is in the extreme south-eastern corner of Pennsylvania. He served there for twenty-seven years.

Bird married Anna Louisa Hull of New York and the couple had five children between 1867 and 1882. In March 1899, Reverend Bird suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by troubles in the parish. His debilitation was severe enough for him to resign, to be placed in a sanitarium in nearby Lindwood, and his wife and family to move to Philadelphia. Gustavus Claggett Bird died in the Lindwood institution on April 5, 1899. He was sixty.

William Bingham was born on April 8, 1752 to William and Mary Stamper Bingham in Philadelphia. At the age of sixteen he graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania, class of 1768.

In 1770, Bingham served as British Consul at St. Pierre, Martinique. His service to the British ended in June 1776, when he agreed to serve the Continental Congress in Martinique. During the American Revolution, he secretly dispensed American propaganda, gathered information, arranged for smuggled shipments of weapons to the army, and recruited privateers to prey on British shipping. The last portion of his mission proved to be personally profitable, as Bingham was entitled to a portion of every British cargo taken. When his mission ended in 1780, he returned to the new United States with a fortune. At the age of 28, Bingham was one of the richest men in the nation.

Edward William Biddle was born May 3, 1852 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to parents Edward M. Biddle and Julia A. Watts. He completed his preparatory studies at Dickinson Grammar School and entered Dickinson College in 1866 with the class of 1870. During his undergraduate career, he was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma (as his three brothers had also been) and Phi Beta Kappa and was active in the Union Philosophical Society. He graduated from Dickinson with his class in the summer of 1870.

Biddle left Dickinson with the intent to pursue civil engineering, but he soon began studying law in the office of his eccentric cousin William M. Penrose. In 1873, he was accepted to the Cumberland County Bar. He practiced law until 1895, then succeeded Judge Wilbur F. Sadler as president judge of the Cumberland County Court of Common Pleas, serving till 1905. In this he was continuing a family tradition; his maternal grandfather - the well-known Judge Frederick Watts - and great-grandfather had been Cumberland County judges.

George Washington Bethune was born into the devout and wealthy family of Divie and Joanna Graham Bethune of New York City on March 18, 1805. His father was a highly successful merchant of Huguenot extraction and both his parents had been born in Scotland. George was privately tutored at home, attended school in Salem, New York, and entered Columbia College in 1819. In January 1822, upon the re-opening of Dickinson College under President John Mason, Bethune came to Carlisle and enrolled and graduated in June 1823. He then studied theology at Princeton and served briefly on a mission to seamen in Charleston, South Carolina in 1826 before being ordained in the Second Presbytery of New York in November 1827.

Claudius Berard was born in France in the port city of Bordeaux on November 21, 1786. Of a relatively wealthy family, he received a classical education and when his conscription order came to enter the Napoleonic armies his father purchased for him a substitute. This substitute was later killed in the Peninsula Campaigns in 1805. Whether or not this influenced his decision to leave France is unclear but he did arrive in New York in early 1807. Some time soon after he arrived in Carlisle and enrolled at Dickinson with the class of 1812. In 1810, his superior capacities in Latin and Greek, along with his capability and interest in modern languages, found him engaged at the College as a "teacher" of French and some Spanish - this was, at last, Rush's "long wished for" completion of the curriculum to include modern languages.