Mapping the Dickinson College Class of 1860

The Dickinson College Class of 1860 reflected a divided country. Thirteen students hailed from slave states and eleven from free states. This dynamic map features several notable alumni who served, and perished, on both sides of the battlefield during the Civil War. While some did not enlist in the military, more than half of the class members noted on this map served either in the Confederate or Union armies.

George Baylor, born in Jefferson County, Virginia, entered Dickinson College in 1857 and graduated with the Class of 1860. He returned home and became an assistant teacher after graduation, but once the war began he enlisted in the 2nd Virginia Infantry. By 1863 Baylor engaged Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley, was taken prisoner, and incurred various battle wounds. His reputation grew as a military leader during Confederate raids through Virginia in 1864. One such raid transformed Baylor into a Dickinson legend. While in combat in Trevilan, Virginia, a Union soldier shot Baylor in the chest. Yet because the Dickinson graduate was wearing his Union Philosophical Society badge (one of the college’s leading clubs at the time), the bullet did not penetrate his skin and he survived. The war ended soon thereafter, and Baylor became a lawyer.

John Henry Grabill enlisted in the 33rd Virginia Volunteer Infantry. In 1862 Grabill, at the age of twenty-two years old, recruited and trained his own unit of soldiers in the Shenandoah Valley. This unit went on to fight during the retreat to Appomattox Court House in 1865. Grabill fought in several key battles himself including the Battle of Brandy Station and Battle of the Wilderness. He elaborated on these engagements as part of his general service in the army in Diary of a Soldier of the Stonewall Brigade (1909). After the war Grabill entered the field of education as a superintendent in Shenandoah County.

Baylor, Grabill, and their classmates offere several stories that contribute to an understanding of the Civil War and its lasting impact on Dickinson College and the generation’s who fought its battles. This dynamic map is one of several projects in Google Maps from the House Divided.