There were 25 graduating members of the class of 1889, and through a gift of Betsy Rawle Slattery in November, we received carte-de-visite photographs of 21 of them. The magnificent Biographical Catalog of the Matriculates of Haverford College published in 1922, provides sketches of the lives of these Haverfordians. Among them were physicians (T.F. Branson, W.R. Dunton, W.C. Goodwin), lawyers (Charles Burr, S.P. Ravenel), professors (W. Fite),  and businessmen (A.N. Leeds, D.C. Lewis, L.J. Morris, J.S. Stokes) and others.

Franklin Butler Kirkbride was one of them. While a student, he was class historian and made Phi Beta Kappa. A businessman, he was affiliated with a large number of companies, often as president or director, including President of the Empire Cream Separator Co., 1912-20. He was decorated by the King of Sweden as Commander of the Order of Vasa in 1921.

During their time at Haverford, the class of 1889 was witness to many events.  To name just one per year while they were students: 1885: the Haverford College Grammar School opened; 1886: the first college tennis tournament was held at Merion Cricket Club; 1887: Isaac Sharpless became president; 1888: Haverford beat Swarthmore in football; 1889: the Gustav Baur collection of books was received by the library, the largest book donation to that point.

If you would like to see images of other members of the class of 1889, please visit: tinyurl.com/4w8aalb

Tags: Haverford History

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 2:40 pm by Diana Franzusoff Peterson and is filed under Collections, College Archives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.