Class of 1858
JOHN THOMAS DICKINSON

Professor Dickinson was born in Cincinnatus, Cortland Co., N. Y., July 7, 1832, and died in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, May. 26, 1886. 

The year after his graduation he began the work of a teacher, which he continued without a single year’s intermission until his death. After teaching for several years in Cooperstown and Oxford, N. Y., he was elected Principal of the Hedding Seminary and Central Illinois Female College, in Abingdon, Ill.  This position he held nine years, from 1858 to 1867.  When he came to Hedding the school numbered only about fifty students, and was laboring under a heavy debt.  Under his wise direction and careful management, the attendance increased during the nine years of his stay to the number of two hundred and twenty-five students, and in a few years from the time he assumed the duties of the principalship, he had succeeded in removing the entire debt of the institution. In its new prosperity, the school desired to take on the form of a college and enlarge its buildings, and these changes were also effected during his administration.

In 1867 he severed his connection with Hedding Seminary, and for the next four years was principal of graded schools at Altona, Ill. From 1871-7, he held the Principalship of the Grand Prairie Seminary and Commercial College, at Onargo, Ill. While here he had entire care of the school, and the work of securing suitable teachers.

The next year he was the successful Principal of the graded schools of Chatsworth, Ill. Being urged to return to Hedding College, he did so, and for four years was its Vice-President and Professor of Mathematics. In the year 1883, he accepted the chair of Mathematics in the Iowa Wesleyan University, and the last two years was its Vice-President.

His long and assiduous labors as a teacher told severely upon his health, and for the last three or four years his strength has been manifestly weakening.  His friends urged him to rest, but he felt that he could not remit the work to which he was so ardently devoted. In the summer of 1885 his nervous system was so exhausted that it was only by a most resolute endeavor that he forced himself to take up his college work in the fall, but during the past winter his mental and physical strength failed, and he was at last forced to give up work.  After this he sank steadily and rapidly until the end.

Professor Dickinson was a thorough, earnest, successful teacher, and he was a most warm-hearted, generous, Christian man.  He was held in singular esteem and affection by his many friends.  Says one who knew him: “The most prominent trait of his character was his charitableness.  His charitable nature made him almost blind to the faults of others.  His favorite chapter of the Bible was the 13th of First Corinthians.  He wished to recognize only the good qualities of others.  This quality, together with his faithfulness, his unswerving rectitude of conduct and devotion to the truth, endeared him alike to all."

Source:  Obituary Record of Alumni of Wesleyan University for the Academic Year Ending June 24, 1886, Middletown, Conn. 1886