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William Libbey

Professor of Physical Geography

Centurion, 1908–1927

Born 27 March 1855 in Jersey City, New Jersey

Died 6 September 1927 in Princeton, New Jersey

Buried Princeton Cemetery, Princeton, New Jersey

Proposed by William Milligan Sloane and Levi Holbrook

Elected 5 December 1908 at age fifty-three

Century Memorial

Colonel William Libbey was an eminent geographer and geologist, teaching those sciences at Princeton for more than forty years and participating in all the important home and foreign associations engaged in investigating them. By way of avocation, he was a rifle-shot of more than American reputation. It was from the New Jersey National Guard that he won his title, but at the age of sixty-two, when we entered the European war, he was appointed major in the Ordnance Reserve Corps and instructor of the firing school. It was perfectly natural that an educator thus qualified should long have acted as marshal for Princeton’s Faculty processions at Commencement.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1928 Century Association Yearbook