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14 unusual facts about Yale College


David G. Johnson

Johnson grew up in Fort Wayne Indiana and is a 1978 graduate of Yale College where he studied economics and a 1981 graduate of Harvard Law School.

Garrick Mallery

His father was Judge Garrick Mallery, who was born April 17, 1784, and graduated at Yale College in 1808.

George D. Lamont

He attended Yale College for a year and a half, then studied law in Lockport, received a degree from Yale in 1841, was admitted to the bar the same year, and commenced practice in Lockport.

Harry Rowe Shelley

He was born in New Haven, Conn. Shelley studied with Gustave J. Stoeckel at Yale College, Dudley Buck, Max (Wilhelm Carl) Vogrich, and Antonín Dvořák in New York, and subsequently completed his musical education in London and Paris.

Hugh Blair

The Lectures were predominantly popular in the United States, with colleges such as Yale and Harvard implementing Blair's theories.

Isaac E. Holmes

Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Holmes attended the common schools, received private tuition, and graduated from Yale College in 1815.

John Gardiner Calkins Brainard

Brainard was tutored at home by an elder brother, and entered Yale College at the age of 15 in 1811.

Jonathan Leavitt

He and the former Emelia Stiles had four daughters, including Sarah Hooker Leavitt, Mary Hooker Leavitt, Emilia Stiles Leavitt (later Mrs. E. T. Foote), and a son Jonathan, who died in 1821 while attending Yale College, an event that threw his father into profound depression.

Judge Leavitt married Emelia Stiles, daughter of President Ezra Stiles of Yale College, for whom today's Ezra Stiles College at Yale is named.

Richard Storrs Willis

He attended Chauncey Hall, the Boston Latin School, and Yale College where he was a member of Skull and Bones in 1841.

Steven Hyman

Dr. Hyman received his B.A. summa cum laude from Yale College; an M.A. from the University of Cambridge, which he attended as a Mellon fellow studying the history and philosophy of science; and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School.

Thomas C. Platt

Accordingly, the young Platt was prepared for college at the Owego Academy and attended Yale College (1850–1852), where he studied theology, but failed to earn a degree.

Yale College, Wrexham

In 1999, Yale University sued Wrexham County Borough Council over the use of the name Yale College (which had been the name of Yale University's undergraduate college for 225 years before Yale Wrexham was founded).

Yali School

Brownell Gage, Warren Seabury, Lawrence Thurston, and Arthur Williams, all graduates of Yale College in the 1890s, founded Yale-in-China, and brought the mission to Changsha between 1901 and 1905.


Alan Bernheimer

He attended Horace Mann School, and graduated in 1970 from Yale College, where he became friends with poets Steve Benson, Kit Robinson, Rodger Kamenetz, and Alex Smith and studied literature with A. Bartlett Giamatti and Harold Bloom and poetry with Ted Berrigan, Peter Schjeldahl, and Bill Berkson.

Alfred N. Beadleston

Beadleston attended Fay School in Southborough, Massachusetts and St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire and Yale College.

Clark Blanchard Millikan

He attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, graduated from Yale College in 1924, then earned his PhD in physics and mathematics at Caltech in 1928 under Professor Harry Bateman.

Emily Baldwin

Emily was also the niece of US Representative Timothy Pitkin, the granddaughter of the Rev. Timothy Pitkin (Yale 1747), great-granddaughter Governor William Pitkin and the Reverend Thomas Clap, who was the fifth President of Yale College; and a descendant of Governors George Wyllys and John Haynes of Connecticut and Governor Thomas Dudley of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony.

Gardiner Spring

At the age of 15, he entered Yale College, where he became the class-mate of John C. Calhoun, and was one of the oldest graduates of that celebrated institution, delivering the valedictory address at the Commencement exercise in 1805.

Glenn Fleishman

Fleishman has a degree in art (graphic design) from Yale College, Yale University (1990), and attended the Yale Summer Program in Graphic Design in Brissago, Ticino, Switzerland, in 1989.

John K. Kane

He graduated from Yale College in 1814, studied law with Joseph Hopkinson, and was admitted to the bar on April 18, 1817.

Orin Kramer

He earned a B.A. from Yale College (where he roomed with former New York state governor George Pataki) and a J.D. from Columbia Law School.

Paul Byard

Byard graduated from Milton Academy in Massachusetts in 1957, from Yale College in 1961 and went on to receive degrees from Clare College, Cambridge, Harvard Law School, and from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture.

Paul Schmidtberger

Originally from Schooley's Mountain in Washington Township, Morris County, New Jersey, Schmidtberger attended the Lawrenceville School and is a graduate of Yale College and Stanford Law School.

Philip Galanes

He graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School, and then worked at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton and Garrison and Debevoise and Plimpton.

Raphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal

While in Newport, Carregal became an intimate friend of Ezra Stiles, afterward president of Yale College.

The Battle of the Kegs

The kegs themselves were made by Colonel Joseph Borden's cooperage to the specifications of Caleb Carman and designed by David Bushnell, an inventor and graduate of Yale College.

Theophilus Eaton

David Yale, who married Ursula Knight in 1641, became the father of Elihu Yale, namesake of Yale College.

Thomas Thacher

His father, Thomas Anthony Thacher, LL D. (Yale BA 1835), was professor of Latin at Yale College from 1842 to 1886, and his mother, Elizabeth (Day) Thacher, was the daughter of Jeremiah Day (Yale BA 1795), president of Yale from 1817 to 1846, and Olivia (Jones) Day.

William Watson Andrews

He was born at Windham, Windham Co., Conn., graduated in 1831 at Yale, and in 1834 was ordained and installed pastor of the Congregational church at Kent, Conn. He early accepted the tenet of the Catholic Apostolic Church, commonly spoken of as the "Irvingites," and in 1849, having given up his charge at Kent.