George Tankard Garrison was born the son of James R. Garrison and Susan P. Tankard Garrison in Accomac County on Virginia's "eastern shore" on January 14, 1835. He enrolled at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1854. A popular student, he was a member of the notorious Zeta Psi fraternity forced to disband in 1853. He walked with a limp since childhood and used a cane. He graduated with his class and entered the University of Virginia Law School and graduated there in 1857.

Bradford Oliver McIntire was born April 23, 1856 in York, Maine. He graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. and received his M.A. three years later from the same university. Following graduation he became a professor of English literature and history at Maine Wesleyan Seminary in Kents Hill, Maine. He remained there until 1890 when he came to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to take the Thomas Beaver Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature.