Brock, John C.

John C. Brock, who was born to William and Elizabeth Donaldson Brock on April 12, 1843, grew up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. As a child, he attended the local African Methodist Episcopal Sabbath School. By the 1860s, Brock worked as a farm laborer and as secretary for the AME Sabbath School. In April 1864, he joined Company F of the 43rd USCT regiment. He received a promotion to commissary sergeant on April 12, 1864 and later to quartermaster sergeant on January 5, 1865. While serving with the 43rd USCT, he also worked as a wartime correspondent for the Philadelphia (PA) Christian Recorder. The paper published a series of letters in which Brock described his experience and perspective on the Civil War. After the war, Brock married Lucinda Jane Dickson on December 25, 1867 in Carlisle. They later moved to Chester County, Pennsylvania and had seven children. His son, John Robert Paul Brock, was the first black graduate of Dickinson College (Class of 1901). In the 1880s, John C. Brock became a minster of West Chester’s Bethel AME Church. He died in West Chester on August 16, 1901. (By Don Sailer)