Category: Uncategorized

 

An overview of Dickinson Class of 1868:

• 30 students total
• 13 graduates, 17 non-graduates

• 24/30 were involved in campus societies or greek life
• 19 in fraternities
• 13 in Belles Lettres Society
• 8 in Union Philosophical Society

Place of Origin:

• Maryland: 11
• Pennsylvania: 6
• Delaware: 3
• Washington D.C.: 2
• New Jersey: 1

• England: 1

Despite the relatively small size of the class, there was a wide range of careers listed in the Alumni Record, making categorization difficult. I tried to organize them under broad areas, e.g. Education, Medicine, Law, Politics, Religion, etc. But again, because of the wide variety, this method wasn’t practical:

• 5 educators
• 6 physicians (5 of whom were non-graduates)
• 4 lawyers
• 4 clergymen
• 5 with military affiliations
• 2 politicians
• 2 engineers
• 2 merchants/manufacturers
• 2 journalists
• 2 railroad officials

8 students were listed as having more than one occupation in the Dickinson Alumni Record of 1905, so there is some overlap in the above list. There were also 5 student entries without any information.

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Other Reference:

There were two graduates I was first interested in researching further: Alexander Crawford Chenoweth and John Franklin Goucher. These two had some of the longest descriptions in the Alumni Record, and had interesting international connections. However, after finishing my data overview, I was struck by the number of non-graduates who went on to become physicians. These were Benjamin Reid Davidson, James Edward Gibbons, Albertus A. Miller, John Cook Rives, and Charles Richey Winterson.

I ran Davidson, Gibbons, Miller, Rives, and Winterson through Wikipedia, American National Biography Online, and the Dickinson Encyclopedia, on the off chance that they might appear there, despite being relatively unknown/unaccomplished. There was a Wikipedia hit for a James Gibbons, but he was a cardinal and the archbishop of Baltimore. When I moved on to look for county histories and records of physicians in each of their respective townships in the 19th century, I encountered a number of biographies on His Eminence, but no reference sources on any of the Dickinson non-graduates.

There are no reference sources on them through Google Books, either. A search of their respective county histories yielded nothing. I did find a History of Montgomery County, PA, birthplace of James Gibbons, that was published in 1884, but the James Gibbons listed therein served as part of the 103rd Pennsylvania Regiment, a group of volunteer soldiers that was active starting in 1862. He was mustered on October 12, 1864, when James Gibbons of the Class of 1868 entered Dickinson.

Though I was unable to find any information on Gibbons, this particular county history is a good example of a source that could be seen as blurring the lines between the primary and reference genres. I considered it a reference because it is one in the sense that it’s offering a very compact record of the happenings in a certain area over a century. In the words of its author,

The ‘History of Montgomery County’ is presented to the public as a memorial of the first century of its corporate existence. Material facts have been diligently sought after and patient labor cheerfully bestowed upon the work. Events are chronicled in narrative rather than in controversial form, and truth, gleaned from a thousand sources, has been condensed in order to make it a valuable work of reference for the present and future generations.

The History, though it serves as a sort of encyclopedia, also dates to a time when 4 of the 5 physicians I was looking for were still alive. However, I think it is distant enough from the early careers of these men–almost 20 years removed–to disqualify it as an excellent primary source.

In closing this miniature historical inquiry, I would stress that my systematic research on Benjamin Reid Davidson, James Edward Gibbons, Albertus A. Miller, John Cook Rives, and Charles Richey Winterson was both rather rudimentary and extremely time consuming. It took approximately 6 hours just to find that there was no information to be found in any of the more popular channels, like the databases listed by Professor Pinsker, nor in a search for county histories. In the interest of time, and due to my own frustration with the dead ends, I elected to put my research on hold in favor of looking at more promising figures from the class. I may return to the physicians in the future, with a more efficient method.

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Ancestry.com: John Franklin Goucher

I began my study of Goucher through Ancestry.com, primarily with the census records available there, but also through Immigration and Travel Records– Passport applications and the like, because I knew from the Dickinson Alumni reference source that he often travelled internationally.

The earliest census in which Goucher appears is the year 1850, when he was 5:

At the time, he was living with his mother, father, and 3 older siblings. John Goucher, the head of the family, was a physician, and three years older than his wife, Eleanor (spelled “Elenor” by the census-taker).

After this, John F. Goucher disappears from census records until 1900, according to Ancestry.com. Even allowing for name misspellings, no families with a close number of members and similar names appear in Pennsylvania, or elsewhere in the U.S. He would have been around 15 at the time of the next census, in 1860. His family stayed in the Pittsburgh area, because that’s where he is listed as going to high school in the Alumni source.

Goucher entered Dickinson in 1864, earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1868, a Master of Arts in 1872, a Doctor of Divinity in 1885, and Doctor of Law in 1899. If he was in school during all the years when the census was taken up until 1900, that would be the most probable cause for his absence from the records. More research would have to be done into the standard living situation of a graduate student in the latter half of the 19th century– dorms might not have counted as households.

It’s also entirely possible that Goucher was traveling abroad in Japan during a couple of the censuses.

Regardless, in 1900 Goucher resurfaces on the United States Federal Census, this time with a wife and three daughters, as well as a boarder named Mary McCauley, and a black servant, recorded as Nellie Kemp.

A 20 minute search in ancestry.com showed that Nellie Kemp doesn’t appear in any other census records. From this one, I know her family was from Virginia, and she was 20 in 1900.

Mary McCauley, on the other hand, was a 47 year-old widowed woman. She had one child, who was no longer alive in 1900. There is information on multiple Mary McCauleys, or variations of that name, available on ancestry, though many of these appear to be from Germany, not Maryland.

I would like to return to these two women in the future, perhaps in another post.

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Sources:

American National Biography Online

Wikipedia

Dickinson College Archives

Ancestry.com

Dickinson Alumni Record

pacivilwar.com

 

The Dickinson Class of 1852 contains many different men from a vast varieties of backgrounds. The class contained 21 graduates with 34 non-graduates. The 21 graduates were all very active in extracurricular activities. Out of all 21 men who graduated only three of them were not in either the Belles Lettres Society, Union Philosophical Society or Zeta Psi Fraternity. It would definitely be interesting to research more into these clubs to figure out what exactly appealed to the 18 members of their class. Some of the students were part of both a society and Zeta Psi. Also, 23 members of the non-graduating members of the class were involved in one of these three clubs. The jobs that the graduates of the class of 1852 can be split into seven basic categories.  Four students pursed jobs in law, five in medicine, six in the clergy, three teaching, two in the Army, one in politics and one as a manufacturer of fruit jars. Although the occupations of half of the non-graduates are unknown, the other 17 students pursued similar lives to the students; four became teachers, three became politicians, three joined the Army, three became farmers and one became a merchant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Combining both the graduates of 1852 and non-graduates there are eight states represented, as shown of the graph the states are, from largest too smallest, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, New York, West Virginia, Missouri and New Jersey.

One subject that is always interesting to explore during the mid-1800’s is the American Civil War and the time period leading up to it.  Dickinson College’s Class of 1852 had a total of five graduating and non-graduating members serve in the army, for both the United States of America and the Confederate States of America. The Dickinson Encyclopedia and the House Divided Project help provide more information about these five soldiers, graduates Ulysses Hobbs and John McCarthy and non-graduates Charles Albright, George Freaner and James H. Jarrett. Although there is not a lot of information on some of these men, both Charles Albright and James H. Jarrett are written about.

Charles Albright was born in Berks county, Pennsylvania. Albright left Dickinson in 1851 to pursue a career in law. He soon after became interested in the settlement of Kansas, particularly with a group called the Western Pennsylvania Kansas company “which intended to settle Kansas with men and families of solid anti-slavery and pro-temperance convictions” (Dickinson College Archives). Along with actively trying to stop the spread of slavery Albright also has a key role in President Lincoln’s rise to nomination. He was a delegate on the Republican National Convention, “that nominated Abraham Lincoln” (Dickinson College Archives). By time of the Civil War Albright was ready to fight for the values he had been spreading in Kansas as well for the man that he helped become president. Throughout the war Albright served in the 132nd Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, the 34th Pennsylvania Militia, and the 202nd Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. He was at the decisive Battle of Chancellorsville, where he “served for a time in command of a brigade” (Dickinson College Archives). After the war Albright worked at the Second Bank of Mauch Chunk. In 1872, Albright was elected to congress for term.

Although James H. Jarrett did not serve any time for the United States Congress his story is still extremely interesting. After leaving Dickinson College in 1850 he studied at the University of Maryland Medical School. When the Civil War broke out Jarrett had the intention of joining the Union Army. However, he recivded much slack from his parents and community. In fact “his younger brother, who was also a physician served with the Confederate First Maryland Calvary” (House Divided). However, he persisted and  joined the Union cause anyway. Throughout the war he served as a surgeon for “the Third of the  First Army of the Potomac”  (House Divided). After the war he returned to Maryland and opened a surgical practice.

Ancestry.com has many amazing tools, including census records dating back to the 1600’s, used to find information about people while using relatively little information to search for them. These census records provide information about not just where the people live but also who they are living with, occasionally their relationship with the people they are living with, but also general information about their life such as age, ability to read and write, native tongue. This information can be very useful when trying to tracking people throughout their lives, as is the case here when following the life of Ralph Pierce, graduate of Dickinson Class of 1852. The basic search bars in Ancestry.com include full name, the place where the person may have lived and the year that they were born. Before starting the search, you can choose how vague or exact you want the search to be. This is particularly helpful when there is incomplete knowledge about a person. The place of origin can also be as broad as a state in the United States, if it is unclear exactly where the person resided.

There were four relevant census records for Ralph Pierce  on ancestry.com, from 1850, 1870, 1880, and 1910. Pierce was 24 at the time of the 1850 census record. Although it states that his home is in Middleburg, New York, Pierce was still in school at Dickinson at the time. When not at school Pierce was living with William and Maria Oliver, who were not his parents. The second census record is 20 years later and at this time Ralph Pierce is living in Jefferson, Tennessee. At this time, he is the home owner of for this family. Although it appears that the four children living with him are his own, there is no confirmation of that on Ancestry.com. Ten years later Pierce is still living in Jefferson, Tennessee, but he is now living with six people who were not present in the last census records. There are multiple possible explanations for this information. During this time, recording accurate data was much more difficult than it is now. One census record could have recorded the first names of these people while the second one used accidentally used their middle names. It is also possible that the children Pierce was living with grew up and moved out of the house. The census record of 1880 clearly states that Pierce is married at this time and that these are his children. The final census record that Ralph Pierce appears in is in 1910 which, according to the census, makes him 87 years old. This however, contradicts previous census records in which he was 24, 43, and 53. Upon further investigation, using the Find a Grave Index on ancestry.com, a link was found to the description of his grave site. It shows that he died in 1908. This site also shows that his son lives with him in both the 1870 and 1880 census, once as Charles and once as Herbert. Following the life of Ralph Pierce has shown how much help ancestry.com can be when trying to track one person throughout their life.  This research also brings to light how all information gathered should be varied by more than one source.

Shown below are the four census record for Ralph Pierce. The highlighted yellow columns are Ralph Pierce.

 

1850 Census

 

 

 

 

 

1870 Census

 

 

 

 

 

1880 Census

 

 

 

 

1910  Census

 

 

 

 

Works cited:

“Albright, Charles,” Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections,  http://archives.dickinson.edu/people/charles-albright-1830-1880

“Albright, Charles,” House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, http://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/4962.

“Jarrett, James Henry,” House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, http://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5975.

“Rev Ralph Pierce,” Find A Grave, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=144748538

 

 

 

Data Analysis- Dickinson College Class of 1862

A significant amount of data regarding the class of 1862 can be collected by using the 1905 Dickinson College alumni Directory.  I started to organize the data by creating excel spreadsheets, which I have included photos of.  I learned some important information about the class of 1862 by reading and analyzing the alumni record.

• There were 13 graduates in the class of 1962 compared to 44 non-graduates. That is a graduation rate of approximately 22.8%.
• Out of all 57 graduating and non-graduating members of the class of 1862:
  • 6 were from Virginia
  • 26 were from Pennsylvania
  • 2 were from Kentucky
  • 2 were from North Carolina
  • 13 were from
    

    A graphic representation of the geographical demographics of the class of 1862.

    Maryland

  • 1 was from Washington, D.C.
  • 1 was from New Jersey
  • 1 was from Indiana
  • 1 was from Mississippi
  • 1 was from West Virginia
  • 3 were from an unknown location

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Nearly every member of the class of 1862 was a member of either the Union Philosophical Society or the Belles Lettres Literary society. A large number of students were also members of fraternities. Popular greek organizations include: Phi Kappa Sigma, Phi Kappa Psi, and Sigma Chi. Many students went on to fight in the Civil War. Other popular professions included law, medicine, and religion. Of the 13 graduating members of the class of 1862, 3 members became physicians, 4 members became lawyers, and 2 members became clergymen.

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Reference Work

I started my work with reference sources by searching every graduating member of the class of 1862 using the American National Biography Online. Not a single graduating member brought up any results. I tried not to get discouraged so I turned to the Dickinson College Encyclopedia. I searched all of the graduating members of the class of 1862. This time I was able to find a search result for one member, Martin Christian Herman.

Martin Christian Herman

Martin Christian Herman was born on February 14th, 1841 in New Kingston, Pennsylvania. During his time at Dickinson College he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and the Belles Lettres literary society. After graduating Dickinson College in 1862, Herman took up the practice of law and opened his own law practice in Carlisle. Herman was so successful in his law career that he became the president judge of the Ninth Judicial District of Pennsylvania. Martin Christian Herman was also a trustee of Dickinson College from 1877 to 1878.

I found this information from the Dickinson College Encyclopedia regarding Herman very interesting, but I wished to know more, especially about his term as a judge. However, my search to find more information on Martin Christian Herman was a frustrating one.  I hit many dead ends and could not find any further information. Perhaps the most infuriating moment when researching Herman was when I found a promising bench guide for Cumberland County, only to find that the guide was not fully accessible on the internet.

I began to hit a wall with the other graduating members of the class of 1862. I decided to research some of the non-graduating members of the class that I thought had the potential to lead to something fruitful.

 

Benjamin Peffer Lamberton 

Benjamin P. Lamberton was born on February 25th, 1844 in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. He is a non-graduating member of Dickinson College class of 1862. During his time at Dickinson, Lamberton was a member of the Belles Lettres literary society.

 

Lamberton left Dickinson College and transferred to the Naval academy in order to pursue a career in the U.S. Navy. He graduated in  1864 and served on the U.S.S America during the Civil War.  Lamberton’s naval career was extensive and he served aboard many ships. He rose through the ranks in the navy and held a variety of positions, including the inspector of the lighthouse board in South Carolina. Lamberton was appointed as Commodore Dewey’s chief of staff, leading Lamberton to serve on the U.S.S Olympia in the battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish American War.

According to the Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars,  Lamberton left ship the day after the battle of Manila Bay and demanded the unconditional surrender of the Spanish. Lamberton’s demand was met and the Spanish surrendered. Lamberton’s naval career progressed all the way to him achieving the position of rear admiral. In Lamberton’s down time, he enjoyed duck hunting and fishing with President Grover Cleveland. Following Lamberton’s death in 1912, a destroyer was named in his honor.

My research with Benjamin Lamberton was definitely the easiest out of all of the members of the class of 1862. I was able to find an extensive Dickinson College Encyclopedia article about him. He was also the only member of the class of 1862 (to my knowledge) that has his own Wikipedia article. The most helpful reference source I used was the Encyclopedia of the Spanish- American Philippine American wars, which I found using google books.

Clay McCauley (MacCauley)

Clay McCauley was born on May 8th, 1843 in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. McCauley was a non-graduating member of Dickinson College class of 1862. During his time at Dickinson College, he was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma and Union Philosophical Society.

McCauley left Dickinson College and became a second lieutenant in the Union Army. At the battle of Chancellorsville, McCauley was taken prisoner by the confederates and was held at Libby prison for a short period of time. After his release,  McCauley finished his college education at Princeton University. McCauley then entered the MacCormick Theological Seminary. However, McCauley was not ordained as a Presbyterian pastor because he held controversial views on the atonement. McCauley then turned to Unitarianism, serving as a minister at various Unitarian churches across the country.

McCauley was a highly educated man. He continued to pursue his intellectual curiosities by studying philosophy and theology in Germany. McCauley was also a man of many talents and tried his hand at anthropological research, newspaper editing, and traveling. McCauley went on a mission to Japan in 1886 with the American Unitarian Association in order to do educational work and promote progressive religions like Unitarianism. McCauley was a prolific author who wrote books on Japan, religion, Germany, and Native Americans. McCauley was well known and respected in Japan. He was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun and the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Japanese emperor.

The first source regarding Clay McCauley that I found was  the civil war research engine at Dickinson College,  House Divided. The entry on McCauley was a brief but helpful overview on his life. It also included many useful images of McCauley.

After this, I tried to search McCauley on American National Biography Online but I had no luck. I thought that I would be unable to find more information on McCauley until I stumbled upon a finding aid created by the Online Archive of California. The finding aid had brief facts and descriptions on McCauley. The most important thing that I learned was that in some sources, Clay McCauley is referred to as Clay MacCauley. This little spelling change proved to make a big difference. I then searched Clay MacCauley instead of Clay McCauley on google. A lot of sources I would not have been able to find came up. The most useful reference I found was an entry on Clay MacCauley in the American National Biography Online, a database I had previously searched and found nothing in. I also found a lot of non-reference sources about MacCauley (or McCauley) that I hope to use in later stages of this project.

I also found an interesting wordpress webpage regarding McCauley. I did not use any of the information from this page in this journal, because it is not a reference source and I am not entirely sure that it is a reliable source. However, It included a research paper about Clay McCauley from a student named Dianna Coscette from a previous historical methodologies class. Her paper included a bibliography, which is what I took interest in. I think this will prove helpful in further research.

The most important thing I learned in regard to research from Clay McCauley is that a name is not always reliable. Sometimes names are spelt wrong or changed, which can make research difficult. It is important to realize that there might be vital information regarding the person you are researching under a different name. Always be on the lookout for potential misspellings and pseudonyms because it could make or break your research.

Ancestry.com Assignment

For the Ancestry.com portion of this assignment, I decided to focus on Clay McCauley because he was the member of the class of 1862 that I found to be the most compelling.

The first bit of information I found regarding Clay McCauley was the 1860 United States Federal Census. According to the census record, 17 year old Clay McCauley was living in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania with his father, Isaac H. McCauley. I believe that Ancestry.com transcribed his name incorrectly, making it J.H. McCauley instead of I.H. McCauley. The older woman in the household confuses me. I figured it would be Clay McCauley’s mother, but it looks like her name is listed as Mary McCauley instead of Elizabeth Maxwell. According to ancestry, McCauley does have a sister named Margaretta but she would not be 42 in 1860. The age of 42 lines up with the age of Elizabeth Maxwell, so I wonder if there was a mistake made by the census taker. There is also a 21 year old “domestic” named Anna Yost living in the McCauley household at this time.

The next document I looked at on ancestry was the 1870 census. According to this census, Clay McCauley was living in Waltham, Massachusetts with the Blood family. I know at this time he was serving at a parish in Waltham. This census record contains what I believe to be a mistake. It lists a “Hannah McCauley” but I believe that is meant to be Clay McCauley’s wife, Annie.

The next and final census record that I looked at was the census of 1880. Clay McCauley was living in Washington D.C. with his wife, who is again referred to by a wrong name. This time they listed her as Anna instead of Annie. The McCauley family seem to be lodging in a house owned by someone named Sarah B. Berry. Berry’s occupation is listed as “keeping house”. I gather this to mean that Berry rented out parts of her house to lodgers like McCauley and his wife. I know from my previous research on McCauley that in 1880 he was working at the financially troubled First Unitarian Church.

 Perhaps these financial problems is why McCauley lived in a shared house.

 Since I experienced issues with the spelling of McCauley’s name, I decided to search the alternate spelling “MacCauley” on the Ancestry.com database. I found a good amount of information, but not as much as I found under the spelling “McCauley”. This makes a convincing argument that McCauley is the correct spelling. However, ancestry.com provided some evidence for MacCauley. On ancestry.com, I found a picture of Clay McCauley’s (or MacCauley) grave. On his tombstone, his name is spelt like MacCauley. I will always remember to search both McCauley and MacCauley when doing my research, or else I will miss out on some important information.

Overall, I had a positive experience using ancestry.com. I would encourage others to use it in their research but it is important to realize that there can be mistakes in census taking and the spelling of ones names.

Data Overview:

The first source I had upon receiving my class year was the alumni record, edited by George L. Reed. From this source, I gathered that in the class of 1858, there are 110 total students, 35 of which successfully obtained a bachelors degree. 110 is a lot of students to study, so I will most likely focus on the 35 graduates, who I have more information about anyways. However, for this exercise, I collected and organized data on every student, as I wanted to get a sense of who the class of 1858 was.

At first, trying to get all the information out of the alumni record for 110 students seemed daunting- there were way too many tiny words in that packet. However, once I began to read through each student’s record, I easily began to develop a sense of the type of information provided- namely, birth and death dates, place of origin, occupation, family information (occasionally), and campus affiliations. Therefore, it was pretty easy to decide how I would categorize and organize the information on an Excel spreadsheet. As I will be focusing more on the graduates than the entire student body in later research, I created two spreadsheets- one of all students, and one of the graduates only. This way, I can choose how closely I want to focus on the information I obtain from the alumni record.

The first category I created in the spreadsheet was place of origin. Of all of the students in the class of 1858, the record was able to find and report the place of origin from 91.8% of the students. From the information gathered, I created the following chart:

 

As can be seen from the pie chart, a very large majority of the students were from close by. Interestingly enough, one of the students in the “Other” category originated from the West Indies. I would assume that he comes from a family of major plantation owners, considering that most of the natives of the Bahamas were enslaved by white Americans and thus would not attend an institution of higher education. It still may be interesting to look into his life and see if I can glean any information about 19th century life in the Caribbean.

The second category I created was occupation. It is important to note that the record reported the occupations of only 60% of the members of the class, so it is not a perfectly complete description. After reading through the occupations, I chose to generalize each specific job into one of seven categories: law, education, religion, business, politics, military, and other, for a few jobs that did not fit into these major categories. This was because I did not want to overwhelm myself with unnecessarily specific information. The point of this exercise is to create a general sense of who these people were, not to write 110 biographies. From this information, I created another chart:

I chose not to include the 40% unknown occupations, as that would consume the entire chart and take away from my ability to comprehend the information that I do have. I will also note that there were many mixtures of occupations per person, as a person obviously does not always do the same thing his whole life. I recorded this in my spreadsheet by listing each category and separating them with a slash. My goal is not yet to understand the specific chronology of each student’s life, but to gain a sense of the types of careers these students went in to.

However, in listing each occupation category for each student, what captured my attention was the occupational mobility these men had. Many were involved in religion, education, politics, law, and business in some manner throughout their lives. I would be interested in looking into the educational structure of Dickinson College at this time to see what these men were studying to give them so many opportunities. Did they even have majors at this time? Were students able to pick and choose classes for their schedules? These are some question I may pursue in future research.

The last category I created was campus affiliation. The alumni record, reported the affiliations of 73% of the class, and the results are complied below:

Clearly, with 73% of the class year involved in at least one, but usually two, campus organizations, I would have a lot of material to look at if I choose to research student life. I would be especially interested in examining the fraternities to take a look at masculinity structures and male gender roles, as that is a topic that has always interested me.

 

Other Reference:

My first candidate for the external reference aspect of the assignment was Daniel Mountjoy Cloud, as he served as a captain in the secret service of the Confederacy,  which seems interesting.

I first searched for him on the Dickinson Archives and got multiple results. The first, a short biography, gave me a good summary of his life. Interestingly enough, I found that while in the Confederate secret service, he actually worked with fellow Dickinsonian Thomas Conrad in a plot to kill Abraham Lincoln. I had head about Conrad’s involvement in that plot a few times before, but I had no idea that an individual from my own assigned class year was also an integral part of the planning.

Cloud was also in another search result in the Dickinson Archives entitled “Students Bury Book.” I must admit I was intrigued. The link led me to a journal entry from another one of the students in my class year, Horatio Collins King (discussed further below). In the entry, King describes an event in which students stole an apparently widely-hated book from a professor and buried it. I suppose mid-19th century college students lacked the many methods of entertainment-or outlets of frustration, depending on how you look at it-that we are lucky to have today. In all seriousness, I really enjoyed reading this small anecdote into student life, and will definitely be looking into the journal of Horatio Collins King in later research.

To continue my research on Daniel Cloud, I moved to Wikipedia. When I typed in his name, an article for Thomas Nelson Conrad appeared just as it did in Dickinson Archives. I learned that when Conrad went to Washington to discuss plans to kill Lincoln, Cloud accompanied him, and that the two were actually college roommates and fraternity brothers. Beyond that, there was no information about Cloud in Conrad’s entry. I moved my search after this to Google Books, and although I found a few secondary sources that mentioned Cloud, I could not find another reference source. In terms of this part of my research, I’ve reached a bit of a dead end, but I do have secondary and primary sources to look in to later on if I so choose.

 

A second student that I researched, Jennings M.C. Hulsey, was killed at the Battle of Bull Run according to the alumni record, which I found intriguing. I found him on Dickinson Archives and learned that he fought in a Confederate unit that “saw some of the heaviest fighting,” and, arguably more importantly, that he was quite the prankster. The reference specifically relates an incident in which he tarred a professor’s blackboards and was temporarily suspended from the college. It seems like a major part of my class year’s day-to-day affairs involved a lot of pranks; it would definitely be fun and interesting to center my project around that idea, if there was enough information on it.

On Google Books, I found him in a 1900 register of his fraternity, Phi Kappa Sigma. Although this document was made less than half a century after his death, and it could certainly be argued that it is a primary and not a reference source, it does have the potential purpose of a gateway into further research. As this was the purpose that it served me, for this assignment I am considering it a reference source. I didn’t gain any new information from the register, but I found an awesome picture of Hulsey’s chapter, which presumably includes Hulsey, although there is no way to tell who is who.

I tried figuring out which one was Hulsey by comparing it to the other picture of him from the Dickinson Archives, but I couldn’t make a definite conclusion. It is also possible that this picture was taken when the register was written, which would mean Hulsey would have been dead for a few decades and certainly would not have been in the picture. Either way, it’s a cool picture, and it’s nice to know that fraternities leave behind so many documents and pictures of their members.

 

After looking into the project that a previous student already made about Horatio Collins King, as well as personally reading his journal entry about burying the abominable book, I knew I had to look into him. There were a LOT of search results from him on the Dickinson Archives site (11 pages to be specific), but as I am currently just looking for reference sources, I focused on the short biography the archives provided. King was involved in many things throughout his life- he wrote and edited books and newspapers, he fought in the Union Army and received a Congressional Medal of Honor, he ran for congress and other political positions, and most importantly, he wrote a lot of songs.

Reference information of King can also be found on his Wikipedia page, which interestingly writes that he took a stance against anti-Chinese sentiment during his time as a judge-advocate-general in New York. I also found more reference sources of him on Google Books, including the 1917 edition of Who’s Who in New York as well as the Biographical Directory of the State of New York 1900, but these sources did not give me any information that I had not learned from Wikipedia or the Dickinson Archives. It seems that historical research-especially when you are only researching references-is a lot of reading the same information 50 times in a row and hoping for one minute detail you haven’t come across yet.

The last person I searched for was Joshua Allan Lippincott. He was the president of the University of Kansas, so I thought he would be relevant enough to have a few sources written about him.

As always, I searched the Dickinson Archives first and found, as always, a short bio. Based on this source he seems like a pretty unpleasant person. (He may or may not have had an illegitimate child and is explicitly described as “dour, pious, and grim.”) However, this is about research, and not morality, so I put that aside and looked at the facts. I read that he was a chief adviser for the Carlisle Indian School. I had learned about the school last year during my American History class, so I was immediately intrigued.

Next, I searched for Lippincott on Wikipedia, finding an article, but it was actually seriously lacking in information in comparison with the Dickinson Archives reference. Perhaps if I do choose to research this man more in depth, I could make some contributions to the page. On Google Books, I found a geneology of his family, which although counts as a reference source in my mind, as it contains brief bits of information that I could then use to further my research elsewhere, it did not provide me with any new information about Lippincott. I also found a short biography on him in the National Cyclopedia of American Biography, but there was no mention of the Carlisle Indian School, which was what I was most interested in. I continued to search, but only found primary sources concerning his relationship with the Carlisle Indian School. However, I am very excited about this find, and will definitely be looking into it more deeply when we analyze primary source documents.

Census Records:

The census records search was probably the least exciting part of my research for this assignment. Although it is always fun to be able to look at a document that was actually written a century and a half ago, census documents can be pretty dull, especially when you are reading 15 of them, one after the other. I researched 3 individuals: Horatio Collins King, Joseph Emory Broadwater (who I did look into in other references, but didn’t mention here due to a lack of significant results) and Joshua Lippincott.

King was fairly easy to find, as I knew his place and date of birth as well as the names of his parents, children, and wives. Screenshots of three records from his life can be seen below:

Interestingly enough, in the last census taken, while King was at the age of 72, the census taker misspelled his name and wrote Horgler instead of Horatio. This was much funnier to me while in the throes of research insanity after staring at census records for the past 5 hours. However, it also shows how important it is to pay close attention, as if I had not noticed that every other piece of information was correct, I would not have noticed that record.

 

Joseph Emory Broadwater didn’t have any funny spelling errors and was fairly easy to find census record on.

There is no mention of a son named Wharton in other record or references, so I’m not sure if that is a typo or a boy living with the Broadwaters who was mistaken for a family member, but it could use some further investigation.

 

Joshua Lippincott was difficult to find records on, and I’m still not even sure that the second one is actually him.

In the second record shown, every single fact lines up perfectly with the Lippincott from the class of 1858. His occupation, his name, his age, and his location all make sense. However, the Dickinson Archives reference stated that there was no record of Lippincott marrying and having children (other than the possible illegitimate child). It is possible that Lippincott had random people living in his house and the census taker assumed they were his family, or maybe Lippincott was married all along and his family simply does not exist according to Dickinson College. Maybe Lippincott had a twin who did the exact same thing he did, but ended up marrying and having a family. Either way, I am certainly intrigued.

Data Overview

Dickinson’s Class of 1845 consisted of a total of 49 students: 18 graduates and 31 non-graduates. In order to get a better sense of who these men were, I compiled them into a spreadsheet using the information available in the 1905 Alumni Record. Each student’s name, birth state, occupation, campus involvement, and whether or not they graduated were included in this spreadsheet. The students were listed alphabetically by last name to facilitate easier navigation. The categories above were chosen for a few reasons. I decided to include each student’s state of birth (if listed) in order to get a better idea of what sort of demographics the class was made up of. The majority of the students came from the mid Atlantic but there were some students from states farther west and south. Knowing where the students came from is important because it gives a better understanding of each student’s values.

In terms of occupation, I listed the broader category of profession for each student rather than their specific job. Since I haven’t gotten into the meat of this project yet, I decided that it’s not that pertinent to know what exactly each student was doing in the years after they graduated. The most common professions were religion and education, but students also became employed in things such as trade, finance, law, and the military. Using the broader category also shows the most common fields of employment for the class which I can then use to decide what I want to focus on for the final project.

During the 1840s the only extracurriculars offered on campus were the Belles Lettres and Union Philosophical Societies. 25 of the members of the class of 1845 belonged to the Belles Lettres Society while 18 were involved in the Union Philosophical Society. 6 students had no affiliation listed in the Alumni Record.

In addition to the columns talked about above, I included a final column titled “Follow Up”. In this column I put down whether or not I thought the student was someone I wanted to research in more detail. This was based primarily on the amount of information available for the student in the Alumni Record because the students with the most information seemed to have led the most distinguished lives. This column allows me to quickly find who I want to research more later on rather than having to enter search every name and see what comes up. Of the 49 members of the class of 1845, there were 8 students that I thought were worth researching further.

Other Reference

Going off this shortlist, I started by entering each student’s name into Google. While I didn’t get any useful hits apart from the Dickinson Encyclopedia for most of the men, there were a couple that did get some hits. One of these was Robert Samuel Maclay, a methodist missionary who was in charge of the missionaries in China, Japan and Korea during the mid 1800s.Through this search I found multiple reference sources about Maclay’s life. In addition to an entry in the Dickinson College Encyclopedia, I also found a Wikipedia page for him and an entry in the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity. This last source is a project seeking to compile entries on all Chinese and foreign Christian missionaries who played a part in expanding Christianity in China and is contributed to by scholars from all over the world. I found the Dickinson Encyclopedia entry to be the most useful of these sources as it contained the most information about Maclay’s life.

I also came across a description of Maclay’s life and work on the Long Island Korean United Methodist Church website. This popular source focused primarily on Maclay’s time as a missionary in Korea and read more like a biography than a reference source.

Reading through these entries was quite interesting, particularly the one on the LIKUMC site because it gave some background information on the state of relations between the US and Korea during this time period. I learned from these sources that Maclay wrote 2 books while in China: Life Among the Chinese With Characteristic Sketches and Incidents of Missionary Operations in China, which described not only his missionary work in China but also discussed the history and culture of China at the time, and Alphabetic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Foochow Dialect. It would be interesting to try to find a copy of either of these books to peruse as it would give me a much better idea of what Maclay’s missionary experience was like. I also learned that Maclay was responsible for opening up Korea to Methodist missionaries, which could be an interesting topic to focus on for the final project.

I also looked more in depth at Isaac N. Urner. Since the Alumni Record listed him as being president of Mississippi College from 1850-67 I first looked on the college’s website to see if I could find anything out about him. Under the “About” tab on the college website there is a section dedicated to the history of the school, including a timeline of all the presidents with information about what each of them did during their tenure. I learned that Urner prioritized increasing student enrollment and succeeded in growing Mississippi College into one of the largest Baptist schools in the country at the time. It was also interesting to learn that he took no pay during the Civil War and many students and faculty actually left to fight in the conflict. This could serve as a jumping off point if I decide to delve into higher education and the Civil War for the final project.

I also found a history of Urner’s family on Google Books in an 1881 book titled History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with Genealogical and Biographical Sketches. While this is a primary source since it was published during Urner’s lifetime it is also very much a reference source and provides only a brief overview of his life and family. It was interesting to read this section because it gave details not only about Urner’s wife and children but also his ancestors who lived in Chester County. Knowing about what Urner’s childhood and home environment were like could be useful should I choose to focus on him for the final project as it gives me a more wholesome view of the man.

Ancestry.com

I chose to research Robert Maclay’s genealogy using Ancestry.com because I found him to be the most interesting member of the class. I started by using the information provided in the Dickinson Encyclopedia for his birthday and place of birth and entered those into the search engine. Ancestry very quickly provided me with a census from 1900 in which Maclay is listed along with his second wife Sarah. Interestingly, the census records that Maclay had been married for 49 years. I was somewhat confused by this until I realized that the census was counting the total number of years Maclay had been married. According to the Dickinson Encyclopedia he had originally married Henrietta Sperry in 1850 but she died in 1878. He married Sarah in 1882 which would make his total years married 46 rather than 49. This disparity could suggest that either Maclay misremembered what year he married Henrietta when he was talking to the censor or else the censor misheard him and thought he said 46.

 

In addition to the 1900 census I also managed to find a letter to the Secretary of State asking for Maclay’s passport to be approved. While I couldn’t make out the signature at the end of the letter, I was intrigued by the fact that someone was writing directly to the Secretary of State in Washington asking for a passport to be approved. The letter suggests that there was some issue of time as the author says that Maclay was supposed to leave for China in the coming week, but it’s nevertheless interesting that they wouldn’t first go to someone lower down on the ladder.

When I first received the 1905 Alumni Record for the Dickinson College class of 1860, I was a bit overwhelmed.  To begin to start to understand more about this class and the individuals in it, I decided to make a data table to compile all the important information on each student. To start my data table, I simply counted all the graduates and non-graduates and added them up.  Following this, I briefly skimmed a few entries of the 1905 Alumni Record to see what kind of information it would have on each student.  It seemed that each entry could be categorized in fairly basic categories like home state, job field, campus life, etc.

Originally, I was frustrated that the Alumni Record did not have complete data for many of the students for each of my categories, so I would add and take away categories.  Eventually I decided on my columns and just put “unknown” if there was no information on a student.

Filling out the data sheet  was easy but time-consuming.  The most difficult and longest part was getting started and deciding exactly what data I wanted to record.  I’ve never done something like this before, so the initial process was somewhat difficult, but once I established a rhythm, it became much easier.  I decided to convert the data chart into a bulleted list because it made the data even easier to read and highlighted the most important information.  The data chart is good for seeing specific information for each individual student, but the bulleted list is designed to learn about the whole class and see what the class as a whole was involved in.

Once the bulleted list was finished, I chose a few individuals to research more in depth.  I decided on a few of the students that had the most information and seemed most interesting.  As with most research, the best way to start was with reference sources.  Considering that they are all former Dickinson students, I checked the Dickinson encyclopedia first.  I used the Dickinson encyclopedia to get more information of course, but also as a test.  If a student was not in the Dickinson encyclopedia, I decided to choose another one because it seems logical that if anyone would have information on Dickinson students, it would be Dickinson.  This eliminated a few options, and I ended up choosing to study David B Brunner, John Henry Grabill, and Clarence Gearhart Jackson more in depth.

All these students were in the Dickinson encyclopedia, and there was a descent amount of background on them.  Brunner taught, was a congressman, and wrote Indians of Berks County.  Grabill was born in Virginia, fought for the Confederacy, had ten children, and was a school superintendent.  Jackson fought for the Union in the Civil War, was Vice President of Jackson and Woodin Manufacturing, and owned a mansion.

After learning this, I decided to check other sources, including American National Biography Online and Wikipedia, to find more.  American National Biography Online yielded no results, as none of the students were quite famous enough.  Wikipedia was a little more useful but only had an entry on David B Brunner, which is mostly because he was a congressman from 1889-1893.  Brunner’s entry was quite short, but it did mention that he was a Pennsylvania German poet, which was exciting to learn because this information was not in the Alumni Directory or Dickinson encyclopedia.

From here, I went to Google Books to see if more information on Brunner’s poems was available and to find more about the other students.  Through Google Books, I found a reference source, A Pennsylvania German Anthology, which contained an entry on Brunner and examples of his poems, which were entirely written in German, and a mentioning of “Goethe Von Berks” as some sort of alias or pen name.  His poems and alter-ego were greatly intriguing so I continued to look for more information on them.  I found virtually the same short biography on Brunner in Publications, Volume 26 by the Pennsylvania-German Society, but importantly, this source confirmed that Brunner used the pen name, Goethe Von Berks, when writing his German poetry.

Searching John Henry Grabill on Google Books yielded some information but nothing new.  He is in the Semi-Centennial Register of the Members of the Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity, a reference source about the Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity which he was a part of.  In search of more information  about his service in the Confederate Army, I  went to The American Civil War Research Database.  Grabill has an entry in it that gives a bulleted list that mentions his enlistment, marriage, and that he was a prisoner of war.  The database was a great reference source because it gave me basic information about Grabill’s life, and it made me want to learn more about his status as a prisoner.

Finally, I searched for Clarence Gearhart Jackson, and I found some very interesting results.  In the Reports of the Heads of Departments to the Governor of Pennsylvania 1876, he is listed as an aide-de-camp to Governor Hartranft, but this is not a reference source because it is merely his name in a list, so it is not what I was looking for.  Intrigued by his mansion and in search of a reference source, I searched “Clarence G Jackson Mansion” on Google which led me to find a history of Berwick Borough, his home and the site of his mansion.   It is a reference source because it provides a brief overview of Berwick designed to give simply a starting point for further research.  This overview has an entry about him and more specifically his mansion, which was actually used as Berwick’s City Hall for almost 100 years after the death of Jackson’s wife, Elizabeth.  The mansion still stands today, though it’s no longer used as city hall.

Next, I decided to search for Clarence Gearhart Jackson on Ancestry.com to see if he appears in the census or other records.  I was very lucky to find him posted in someone’s family tree, meaning that someone else already collected a series of documents and connected it with Jackson.  This saved me a lot of time, and I only spent about an hour to go through the documents and report on my findings.  This collection included three censuses, a veteran burial card, and pictures of his headstone.

I chose to include the 1870 census, as opposed to the 1850 or 1860 census, because it is the only one to have both of his kids, Jane and Henrietta Jackson.  It also includes Elizabeth Jackson, his wife.  Interestingly, none of this family’s real names are recorded.  Clarence is CG, Elizabeth is Lizzy, Jane is Jenny, and Henrietta is Ettie.  Jane appears to be named after Clarence’s sister, who’s also named Jane but goes by Jenny.  Interestingly, Clarence’s sister dies the same exact month that his daughter is born.

Jackson died in 1880.  Records of this can be found in a census mortality record, a New Jersey and Pennsylvania church and town record, and a Pennsylvania Veteran Memorial card.  I chose to include the veteran card because Jackson served in the Civil War and because it has more information than the other sources.

A picture of Jackson’s headstone, described as a “very large monument” on the veteran card, can be found on a link from findagrave.com on Ancestry.  Judging by this headstone and knowledge of his role as Vice President of Jackson and Woodin Manufacturing Company, Jackson was quite a wealthy man.

Because finding Clarence Jackson’s information on ancestry.com was so easy, I decided to take another hour to see if I could find census records or anything else on John Henry Grabill.  Again, I was lucky to find him to be a part of a family tree, but this one was not nearly as complete as Jackson’s.  It only had a record of Grabill being a Confederate prisoner of war.

This was a very exciting find because it confirmed the information from the American Civil War Database.  Also, going into the search for Grabill I only had expectations to find census records, so this was quite the surprise.

Another interesting find was an entry on him in a U.S. School Catalog.  He is in the catalog along with several other members of the Dickinson class of 1860, and they are all grouped together for their membership in the Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity.  The catalog entry is very similar to the 1905 Alumni Record.

Finally, Grabill is in multiple censuses taken throughout his long lifetime.  Here he is in the 1920 census, taken just two years before his death.  He lives in an eleven member household, including his wife, six kids, a son-in-law, a servant, and the servant’s son.

To summarize, this research journal took many hours to complete and was frustrating at times, but overall it was fun to go from a data chart about a class of 48 students down to finding real records and primary source documents through ancestry.com on two students.

Due Date

• Friday, September 16, 2016 by 5pm (via course website)

Objective

Students in History 204 should create a short entry in their research journal (about 600-800 words, or 3-4 pages) that documents how they used Ancestry.com and other reference sources to help launch their investigation of their assigned Dickinson College class of students (1840-1880).

Grading

• Entries will NOT be graded on prose or design elements (though both will factor into whether or not the journal entry will ultimately get published).  Instead, the focal point of grading will be on research effort and historical analysis.  Try to focus on communicating a deliberate and effective protocol for historical research.

Guidelines

• DATA OVERVIEW. Begin by organizing the information about your class from the 1905 Alumni Record into some kind of useful datasets.  In other words: try to provide your readers with a general overview of the subject –how many students total, how many graduates, non-graduates, providing some breakdown of their origins, affiliations, and career choices, etc.  You may do this basic statistical analysis in sentence form, or through bullet points, or with some kind of table, chart or infographic.  It just depends.  But keep in mind that this overview might help uncover possible fruitful avenues for teaching and presentation in your later essays and projects.
• OTHER REFERENCE. Then select some of your subjects for further investigation in reference sources beyond the 1905.  These reference sources might include:  Wikipedia, American National Biography Online (via Library databases), or nineteenth-century publications, such as county histories, regimental histories (for Civil War veterans), or various professional directories (like bench and bar guides, cyclopedias, or annual proceedings from Methodist conferences).  Typically, you will be able to research these published nineteenth-century sources most easily by advanced searching in Google Books.  Please note that you do not have to research ALL of your subjects in this manner, and certainly should not expect to have the space to report on all of these efforts in your post regardless, but look for opportunities to describe a few or several of them in your initial research journal entry.
• ANCESTRY.COM.  Please conclude this initial journal entry by documenting with one or two good examples, how you can trace the lives of your subjects over time using Census records from Ancestry.com (via Library databases).  Make sure to include cropped page images from the relevant Census records and try to show some creativity with your interpretation.  Here is where, for example, you might look for opportunities to begin identifying the women important in the lives of your Dickinson subjects.

Reminders

• Prose is not graded here, but writing with clarity and vigor should always be your objective.  Poorly written posts will not hurt your grade at this stage, but they will prevent you from getting your work published.  Quick note –these entries may contain first person pronouns, but try to keep the focus on “I” to a minimum nonetheless.
• Design is not graded here either, but use this initial entry as a way to test out your WordPress skills.  Include images (with proper captions and credits) that have text neatly wrapped around, and provide occasional hypertext links to freely accessible outside sources.  Footnotes are not required in research journal entries, but you want to experiment with providing ways for readers to visualize and access your sources.

Adapted from a recent post at Blog Divided:

It was bound to happen sooner or later.  Last week, sadly, we discovered that there was a forged document in the House Divided research engine.  David Gerleman from the Papers of Abraham Lincoln contacted us to point out that a letter supposedly written by Abraham Lincoln to Georgia politician (and future Confederate Vice President) Alexander Stephens, dated January 19, 1860, was a known Lincoln forgery.  The letter (since removed) was full of memorable and sometimes unLincolnian statements about the sectional crisis and ended with the line:  “This is the longest letter I ever dictated or wrote.”  Since Lincoln was not in the habit of dictating anything at all (especially in those pre-presidential days), this was a document that should have set off warning bells.  But it was published as part of a pamphlet that had been produced during the centennial of Lincoln’s birth in 1909 and even now remains in wide circulation on the Internet and elsewhere.  A recent scholarly article in the Tulane Law Review by John Inazu (“The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly” 2010) even began by quoting from it.  Yet there was no such exchange with Stephens. For a full discussion of the problems with the alleged January 19, 1860 document, see the article, “Four Spurious Lincoln Letters” in the Bulletin of the Abraham Lincoln Association 21 (Dec. 1930): 5-9, available online here). You can view the text of the forged document at the Internet Archive (where we apparently found it) inside a pamphlet edited by noted Lincoln collector Judd Stewart and entitled,  Some Lincoln Correspondence with Southern Leaders Before the Outbreak of the Civil War (1909).   Stewart was one of the so-called “Big Five” of early Lincoln collectors and was careless enough to fall victim to these types of scams (his collection, stripped of several other faked items, is now housed at the Huntington Library in California).  During the decades after Lincoln’s assassination, there was practically a land office business in Lincoln forgeries, and their ripple effects are still being felt today.  I exposed one of these problems in 1999 when actor Warren Beatty and journalist Jonathan Alter used a phony Lincoln quotation about the evils of big corporations that had originally been ginned up during the Populist era and continues to be quoted and re-quoted today despite numerous debunkings.  History News Network reprinted the piece in 2005 when author Kevin Phillips and historian Paul Kennedy both made the same mistake of admiring a Lincoln who sounded suspiciously like William Jennings Bryan.  What’s the lesson in all this for teachers and students?  Check your sources.  We never should have used a 1909 pamphlet for a Lincoln document when the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols., 1953; 1974, 1990) is the current gold standard in Lincoln’s writings (though the online Papers of Abraham Lincoln, where Gerleman works, will soon become the new AAA-rated repository for all things Lincolniana).  And always remember, when a story or document seems too “good” to be true … it just very well might be.