Bradford Oliver McIntire (1856-1938)

Bradford Oliver McIntire was born April 23, 1856 in York, Maine. He graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. and received his M.A. three years later from the same university. Following graduation he became a professor of English literature and history at Maine Wesleyan Seminary in Kents Hill, Maine. He remained there until 1890 when he came to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to take the Thomas Beaver Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature.

As a professor of English he was a recognized authority of Elizabethan literature and Shakespearean drama. He taught classes on the history of English literature, literary criticism, American literature, and Shakespeare. McIntire’s lectures were slowly dictated and each lesson was a skillfully organized essay. He also taught the three basic courses, English language, English literature, and rhetoric and composition until Montgomery Porter Sellers joined the English department in 1895.

Besides teaching, McIntire served as the dean of the freshman class from 1897 to 1904. He was on the faculty committee on government and discipline, and was later the dean of the sophomore class. McIntire was part of the faculty committee on graduate work from 1899 to 1924 and a member of the advisory committee of the College Athletic Association. He held the position of secretary of the faculty from 1926 to 1929. In 1903, McIntire established the Library Guild, a society in which membership was reserved to those who made an annual contribution to the endowment fund of the library.

Beyond Dickinson, McIntire taught evening Sunday school classes at Allison Methodist Church for 25 years. He was also a member of the Y.M.C.A. and the Kiwanis Club. McIntire was twice the president of the Laymen's Association of the Central Pennsylvania Conference and a member of the Central Pennsylvania Conference Board of Education. In 1904, he was a delegate to the General Conference at Los Angeles, California.

Upon his retirement in 1929, McIntire was the senior member of the faculty with an unsurpassed record of 39 years of service as a professor. To honor him, a women's literary society, the McIntire Society was founded in 1921, though it was only active for one year. Three Dickinson College yearbooks, those of 1899, 1915, and 1928, are dedicated to him and his service to the College. In 1948 the College purchased his former residence, which was named for him.

McIntire married Miss May Florence Park and had three children, all of whom became Dickinsonians: Leon A., class of 1907, Marjorie L., class of 1910, and John V., class of 1913. At the celebration of McIntire's 80th birthday in 1936, the Dickinson College Community compiled a scrapbook in which they expressed how he was a personal friend, and a dedicated and well-loved professor. Bradford Oliver McIntire died on March 6, 1938.