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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Val Sheafer was born March 4, 1922 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and entered the local Dickinson College with the class of 1943 in September 1939. He was a member of Phi Kappa Psi and a senior mathematics major when he left Dickinson in April 1943 to enlist in the Army Air Corps. With credit assigned from his Army training, he was qualified to graduate at Dickinson's commencement in late May 1943, and his father received his diploma on his behalf.

Sheafer trained at Montgomery, Alabama and at gunnery school in Florida before completing bombardier school in Texas. He received his commission and his wings in April 1944. He was assigned to England on February 11, 1945 as the bombardier on a B-24 Liberator. Sheafer was killed five weeks later when his aircraft crashed during a training flight. He had just reached his twenty-third birthday.

A member of the class of 1919 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, studying the Latin-Scientific course, Frank Shauck was from New Freedom, Pennsylvania. He was a member of Belles Lettres Literary Society and was active in the Dickinson Y.M.C.A.

Enlisting sometime during the middle of 1918, Shauck entered the Army Chemical Warfare Service and died in Washington, D.C. on October 12, 1918.

William Wallace Shapley was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1843, the son of Rufus and Susan Shapley and the younger brother of Rufus Shapley. He was educated locally and entered Carlisle's Dickinson College with the class of 1863. He was a member of the Union Philosophical Society but did not graduate. He later studied medicine and took up service in the Unites States Army as an Assistant Surgeon.

Shapley served with the Seventh Infantry in Florida between 1865 and 1869 before it was reassigned to Fort Shaw in the department of the Platte in Montana Territory in the spring of 1870. Conditions were difficult for infantry and Shapley, according to his fellow officers, had become quite stout and was suffering increasing apoplectic attacks. On a particularly arduous march into the Wind River Country, Shapley suffered a brain seizure near Silver Star, Montana and died in the early morning of August 12, 1870. He was buried in a lonely spot on the march, near the Fish Creek Post Office close to the road of the stage coach line. The nearest railway was then four hundred miles away.