Question 9
Who were the two nineteenth-century brothers and alumni who were grandsons of a prominent founder of the College?
Answer 9
Our question, submitted by Richard A.B. Mitchell '50, proved a tough one. The correct answer came from Ira M. Rutkow, a physician in Marlboro, N.J., who knew that the brothers were Theodric Romeyn Beck (1791-1855) and Lewis Caleb Beck (1798-1853).
“These two gentlemen were distinguished grandsons of the Rev. Dirck Romeyn, D.D., one of the founders of Union. Theodric was one of the greatest experts in legal medicine that America has produced, and Lewis was a professor of chemistry at the Albany Medical College,” Rutkow says.
Our reply to a previous question, about FitzHugh Ludlow of the Class of 1856, drew the
following response from Donald Dulchinos '78:
“Your biography of FitzHugh Ludlow is slighting and incorrect in spots. He was not married in 1862 and divorced a year later. He married in 1859 and divorced in 1865-his wife married his close friend, the painter Albert Bierstadt, within six months.
“The Hasheesh Eater was his one real success, but he and Bierstadt traveled to California via the Overland Stage and his Atlantic articles about the trip were among the first significant reporting from the western U.S.; later they were collected into a book,
The Heart of the Continent. He first contracted tuberculosis on that strenuous trip.
“He later edited a book, The Opium Habit. He was an acknowledged medical authority on that problem, which had grown rapidly in the U.S. in the wake of the Civil War.”
Question 10:
Since our query about the early nineteenth century proved difficult, this time we're more contemporary.
One of the great art thefts in the past twenty-five years had a Union connection. What was the theft, and what was the outcome?
Send your answer to Puzzle, Public Relations Office, Union College, Schenectady, N.Y. 12308.