Samuel Gring Hefelbower

President Hefelbower 1904-1910

Samuel G. Hefelbower (1871-1950) was 32 years old when the Board of Trustees elected him president. He had not known he was under consideration, and deliberated for some time before accepting the position. An 1891 graduate of the College, he was a Lutheran pastor who studied at the universities of Leipzig and Halle in Europe. Beginning in 1902, he served the College as a professor of German and as an instructor in French and history. An account by Joseph Eugene Rowe, Class of 1904, which is included in Hefelbower's own "A History of Gettysburg College, 1832-1932," credits Hefelbower with leading efforts to make entrance requirements for students more stringent and to broaden the curriculum. As a result, by 1908, the trustees added departments of French, physics, and philosophy and increased the faculty in several areas. His wife, Edna M. Lewis, was an 1896 graduate of the College.