# List of Union College alumni

This list of Union College alumni includes graduates of Union College in Schenectady, New York, United States who have achieved some notability or influence in the public or private spheres. Such a list is necessarily selective, and perforce subjective.

## Alumni list

| Name | Year | Notability |
| Morris S. Miller | 1798 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| John Van Buren | 1818 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Walter Case | 1799 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| John Savage | 1799 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| John Cramer | 1801 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| John B. Yates | 1802 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Abraham Bockee | 1803 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| James M. Matthews | 1803 | First Chancellor of New York University |
| John W. Taylor | 1803 | Speaker of the United States House of Representatives (two terms) |
| Thomas Church Brownell | 1804 | President of Washington College (Trinity College) |
| Harmanus Peek | 1804 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| John C. Spencer | 1806 | Member of the United States House of Representatives; United States Secretary of War; United States Secretary of the Treasury |
| Theodric Romeyn Beck | 1807 | Author of pioneering Elements of Medical Jurisprudence (1823) |
| Adam Empie | 1807 | President of The College of William & Mary |
| John Watts Cady | 1808 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Gideon Hawley | 1809 | First New York State Superintendent of Common Schools; Regent of the State University of New York; "Father of the New York State Common School System" |
| John F. Schermerhorn | 1809 | Missionary; appointed Indian Commissioner by Andrew Jackson |
| Alfred Conkling | 1810 | Member of the United States House of Representatives; Federal judge; United States Minister to Mexico |
| William Kendall Fuller | 1810 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| John Maynard | 1810 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Abraham Maus Schermerhorn | 1810 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Charles Borland, Jr. | 1811 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Francis Wayland | 1813 | President of Brown University (1827–1855) |
| George Washington Gale | 1814 | Founder of the Oneida Institute and Knox College (Illinois). Galesburg, Illinois, named for him. |
| Richard M. Blatchford | 1815 | Secretary to William H. Seward; New York Central Park Commissioner |
| Gilbert Morgan | 1815 | President of Western University of Pennsylvania, Edgeworth Female Seminary, Harmony Female College |
| Dudley Selden | 1815 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Nathaniel Pitcher Tallmadge | 1815 | Member of the United States Senate |
| Henry Booth Cowles | 1816 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Richard M. Blatchford (attorney) | 1818 | Attorney, Member of the New York State Assembly, U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican |
| Sidney Breese | 1818 | Member of the United States Senate; author of landmark judicial decisions on state and national economic regulation |
| George Washington Doane | 1818 | Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey |
| Augustus Seymour Porter | 1818 | Member of the United States Senate |
| Alonzo Potter | 1818 | Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania |
| Charles Rogers | 1818 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Robert J. Breckinridge | 1819 | President of Jefferson College; Superintendent of Public Instruction for Kentucky |
| Joseph William Chinn | 1819 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| James Irvine | 1819 (1821?) | President of Ohio University |
| Andrew W. Loomis | 1819 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| David Stewart | 1819 | Member of the United States Senate |
| Laurens Perseus Hickok | 1820 | Educator; author; President of Union College (New York) |
| Archibald L. Linn | 1820 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| William H. Seward | 1820 | Governor of New York; member of the United States Senate; United States Secretary of State |
| George A. Starkweather | 1819 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Nathaniel Boyden | 1821 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Edward Curtis | 1821 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| William Montague Ferry | 1821 | Presbyterian minister, missionary, and community leader who founded several settlements in Ottawa County, Michigan. |
| Hiram Gray | 1821 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Sherlock J. Andrews | 1821 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| John Williamson Nevin | 1821 | President of Franklin & Marshall College |
| Gideon Hard | 1822 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Albert S. White | 1822 | Member of the United States House of Representatives; member of the United States Senate |
| David P. Brewster | 1823 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Chesselden Ellis | 1823 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| John A. Lott | 1823 | Member of the New York State Senate and the New York State Assembly; Justice of the New York Superior Court |
| Stephen Alexander | 1824 | Astronomer; original member of the United States National Academy of Sciences |
| Charles Goodyear | 1824 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Ira Harris | 1824 | Member of the United States Senate; lawyer, judge, educator |
| Charles J. Jenkins | 1824 | Governor of Georgia |
| Josiah Sutherland | 1824 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Bradford Ripley Wood | 1824 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Samuel Dickson | 1825 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Amasa J. Parker | 1825 | Member of the United States House of Representatives; Regent of the State University of New York; Justice of the New York State Supreme Court; a founder of Albany Law School |
| John F. McLaren | 1825 | President of Western University of Pennsylvania |
| Henry Philip Tappan | 1825 | First official President of the University of Michigan (1852-1863) |
| George Emlen Hare | 1826 | Dean of the Philadelphia Divinity School |
| Horatio Potter | 1826 | Episcopal Bishop in the Diocese of New York; founded the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York |
| Thomas Fielder Bowie | 1827 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| M. Lindley Lee | 1827 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Samuel W. Beall | 1827 | Explorer; Indian agent; Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin; one of the founders of Denver |
| William W. Campbell | 1827 | Member of the United States House of Representatives; Justice of the Superior Court of New York City; Justice of the New York State Supreme Court; historian |
| Levi Hubbell | 1827 | Wisconsin Supreme Court |
| Preston King | 1827 | Member of the United States Senate |
| Erasmus D. MacMaster | 1827 | President of Hanover College |
| Virgil Delphini Parris | 1827 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Rufus Wheeler Peckham | 1827 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Leonard Woods | 1827 | President of Bowdoin College (1839–1866) |
| Ward Hunt | 1828 | Mayor of Utica, New York; Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1872-1882) |
| Joseph G. Masten | 1828 | Mayor of Buffalo, New York; Judge of the New York Superior Court |
| Robert A. Toombs | 1828 | Member of the United States Senate; Secretary of State for the Confederate States of America |
| Joseph Alden | 1828 | President of the New York State Normal Institute; president of Jefferson College |
| Israel T. Hatch | 1829 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| John L. Wilson | 1829 | African missionary and explorer; author of Western Africa: Its History, Condition, and Prospects (1856) |
| George Washington Eaton | 1829 | President of Colgate University (1856-1868) |
| Leander Babcock | 1830 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Frank Hastings Hamilton | 1830 | Surgeon; president of the New York Society of Medical Jurisprudence; author of important medical texts |
| Henry James | 1830 | Philosopher and author; father of Henry James (novelist) and William James (philosopher/psychologist) |
| Henry S. Randall | 1830 | Historian; author of The Life of Thomas Jefferson (1858) |
| Augustus Schell | 1830 | Lawyer; stock market manipulator; successor of William M. Tweed as Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society |
| Squire Whipple | 1830 | The "Father of American Metal Bridges"; civil engineer; inventor; bridge designer |
| Orsamus H. Marshall | 1831 | Chancellor of the University of Buffalo |
| Roswell Park | 1831 | President of Racine College |
| Don A. J. Upham | 1831 | Mayor of Milwaukee |
| Thomas Allen | 1832 | Member of the United States House of Representatives; railroad builder; printer to the Senate and House |
| Edward Dorr Griffin Prime | 1832 | Religious journalist |
| Joseph Mullin | 1833 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Daniel Pratt | 1835 | New York State Supreme Court Justice |
| George F. Comstock | 1834 | Lawyer; Solicitor of the United States Treasury; Chief Judge of the New York State Court of Appeals |
| Edmund Sears | 1834 | Clergyman; author; hymn writer ("It Came Upon the Midnight Clear," "Calm on the Listening Ears of Night") |
| John Bigelow | 1835 | Consul-General to Paris during the Civil War; Minister to France; founder of the New York Public Library |
| John Wells | 1835 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Henry W. Halleck | 1837 | General-in-Chief of the Union Armies |
| Levi Augustus Mackey | 1837 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Edward Tuckerman | 1837 | Botanist; lichenologist; namesake of Tuckerman Ravine |
| Clarence A. Walworth | 1838 | Catholic priest; author; historian |
| Austin Blair | 1839 | Member of the United States House of Representatives; governor of Michigan |
| Joel T. Headley | 1839 | New York Secretary of State; historian and author |
| John Upfold Pettit | 1839 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| George W. Clarke | 1840 | Founder of the Mount Washington Collegiate Institute |
| Leonard Jerome | 1839 | New York City financier and grandfather of Winston Churchill |
| Lewis Henry Morgan | 1840 | Anthropologist; ethnologist; the "Father of American Anthropology" |
| John W. Cary | 1842 | Wisconsin State Senator |
| Charles C. Parry | 1842 | Botanist of the United States Department of Agriculture; explorer and botanist of the Rocky Mountains |
| Clarkson N. Potter | 1842 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Franklin B. Hough | 1843 | Botanist; mineralogist; forester; historian of New York State; Director of the United States Census; "Father of American Forestry" |
| Charles Lewis Beale | 1844 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Alexander H. Rice | 1844 | Member of the United States House of Representatives; governor of Massachusetts and mayor of Boston |
| Edward P. Allis | 1845 | International manufacturer; inventor |
| Robert Earl | 1845 | Judge on the New York State Court of Appeals |
| Daniel Hall | 1845 | Member and Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly |
| Daniel Bigelow | 1846 | Regent of the University of Washington; founder of the University of Puget Sound |
| John Michael Carroll | 1846 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| John M. Gregory | 1846 | President of the University of Illinois and Kalamazoo College |
| John T. Hoffman | 1846 | Governor of New York |
| Bradley Phillips | 1846 | Clergyman and member of the Wisconsin State Assembly |
| Gabriel Bouck | 1847 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Chester A. Arthur | 1848 | Twenty-first President of the United States |
| William James Stillman | 1848 | Journalist; artist; photographer; diplomat; American Consul to Rome during the Civil War; American Consul at Crete |
| Hannibal Goodwin | 1848 | Inventor of roll film |
| Charles C. Nott | 1848 | Chief Justice of the United States Court of Claims |
| Daniel Butterfield | 1849 | Civil War general; composer of revised "Taps" bugle call; Civil War chief of staff for General Joseph Hooker; Civil War chief of staff for General George Meade |
| Frederick W. Seward | 1849 | Diplomat; journalist; son of William H. Seward; Assistant Secretary of State |
| Allen Wright | 1852 | Governor, Choctaw Nation; author of English-Choctaw dictionary |
| John F. Hartranft | 1853 | Governor of Pennsylvania |
| Edward Tuckerman Potter | 1853 | Architect of the Nott Memorial; architect of Mark Twain's residence in Hartford, Connecticut |
| William Clarke Whitford | 1853 | President of Milton College |
| Orlow W. Chapman | 1854 | Solicitor General of the United States |
| Edwin W. Rice | 1854 | Editor and author with the American Sunday School Union |
| Sheldon Jackson | 1855 | Presbyterian missionary in the Western United States; first United States Superintendent of Public Instruction in Alaska |
| Philip S. Post | 1855 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Clement Hall Sinnickson | 1855 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| William G. Donnan | 1856 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| George W. Hough | 1856 | Astronomer; inventor of meteorological instruments; president of the World Congress on Astronomy and Astrophysics |
| Seaman A. Knapp | 1856 | Pioneer in experimental agriculture and practical education; president of Iowa State University |
| Fitz Hugh Ludlow | 1856 | Author; drug experimentalist; author of The Hasheesh Eater |
| Seth L. Milliken | 1856 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Laurenus C. Seelye | 1857 | First president of Smith College; advocate for women's colleges |
| Charles Horton Peck | 1859 | Mycologist; New York State Botanist |
| Elnathan Sweet | 1859 | New York State Engineer and Surveyor |
| Warner Miller | 1860 | Member of the United States House of Representatives; member of the United States Senate |
| Charles E. Patterson | 1860 | Speaker of the New York State Assembly |
| Americus Vespucius Rice | 1860 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Chester Holcombe | 1861 | Missionary; diplomat; secretary of the United States Legation to China |
| Charles E. Smith | 1861 | United States minister to Russia; United States Postmaster General |
| Ridgley C. Powers | 1862 | Governor of Mississippi |
| Amasa J. Parker, Jr. | 1863 | New York State Senator; Union College trustee; author of Banking Law of New York |
| Charles Edward Pearce | 1863 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| William Appleton Potter | 1864 | Architect; designed many Princeton University buildings; Supervising Architect of the United States Department of the Treasury |
| Daniel Newton Lockwood | 1865 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Cady Staley | 1865 | President of Case Western Reserve University |
| La Mott W. Rhodes | 1866 | Member of the New York State Assembly |
| Edward Wemple | 1866 | Member of the United States House of Representatives; New York State Comptroller |
| Joseph M. Carey | 1867? | Member of the United States Senate; member of the United States House of Representatives; governor of Wyoming; author of the Carey Arid Lands Act (1894) |
| Preston King | 1827 | Member of the United States House of Representatives; member of the United States Senate |
| Franklin H. Giddings | 1877 | "Father of American Sociology" |
| Joseph E. Ransdell | 1882 | Member of the United States House of Representatives; member of the United States Senate from Louisiana; career ended by Huey Pierce Long, Jr. |
| Wallace T. Foote | 1885 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Henry A. Van Alstyne | 1893 | New York State Engineer and Surveyor |
| Archibald Rutledge | 1904 | Educator, author |
| Robert P. Patterson | 1912 | United States Secretary of War |
| George Stibitz | 1927 | One of the fathers of the modern digital computer |
| John Schiller Wold | 1938 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Clare W. Graves | 1940 | Psychologist; developed theory of human development known as "emergent cyclical levels of existence theory" |
| Gordon Gould | 1941 | Widely, but not universally, credited with the invention of the laser |
| Armand V. Feigenbaum | 1942 | Businessman; developer of the concept of Total Quality Management/Control |
| Stanley Green | 1943 | American historian of theatre and film, and a writer on music. |
| Gordon F. Newell | 1945 | Scientist in the field of applied mathematics; Gordon–Newell theorem named for him and colleague William J. Gordon |
| Baruch S. Blumberg | 1946 | Nobel Prize in Medicine (1976) |
| Elmer H. Antonsen | 1947 | Professor of Germanic Languages with a particular expertise in Runology |
| Herbert Freeman | 1947 | Computer Pioneer Award winner from the IEEE Computer Society; designer of the Sperry Corporation's first digital computer, the SPEEDAC |
| Harry Mazer | 1948 | Author of books for children and young adults |
| Eric Schmertz | 1948 | Law professor and labor arbitrator |
| Richard Selzer | 1948 | Surgeon and author |
| Hermann A. Haus | 1949 | Frederic Ives Medal; National Medal of Science |
| David Markson | 1950 | Author of works such as Wittgenstein's Mistress and The Ballad of Dingus Magee |
| Herman W. Nickel | 1951 | Ambassador to South Africa |
| John H. Ostrom | 1951 | Paleontologist |
| Howard Simons | 1951 | Managing editor of The Washington Post |
| Herbert Schmertz | 1952 | Vice President of Public Affairs for the Mobil Corporation |
| Robert Chartoff | 1955 | Producer |
| Neil Abercrombie | 1959 | Politician in Hawaii; member of the US House of Representatives (1986–87, 1991–2010) and 7th Governor of Hawaii (2010–2014) |
| George DiCenzo | 1962 | Character actor and acting teacher |
| Alfred Sommer | 1963 | Ophthalmologist; discovered the benefits of Vitamin A for children deficient in this vitamin |
| Alan Horn | 1964 | President and COO of Warner Bros. Entertainment |
| Victor H. Fazio | 1965 | Member of the United States House of Representatives |
| Douglas LaBier | 1965 | Psychologist; psychotherapist; writer; director of the Center for Adult Development |
| Martin Jay | 1965 | Historian; critic |
| Richard Fateman | 1966 | One of the developers of the Macsyma computer algebra system and the Franz Lisp system |
| Michael Fuchs | 1967 | Executive producer for HBO |
| Lamin Sanneh | 1967 | D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale Divinity School and Professor of History at Yale University |
| Kenneth Merchant | 1968 | Chair of Accountancy at the Leventhal School of Accounting, University of Southern California |
| Jeffrey DeMunn | 1969 | Film and television actor |
| Anderson Mazoka | 1969 | Zambian politician and president of the United Party for National Development (UPND), a leading opposition party |
| Phil Alden Robinson | 1971 | Screenwriter; director |
| Jim Tedisco | 1972 | New York State Assemblyman |
| Kate White | 1972 | Author; editor |
| Steven Zaloga | 1973 | American historian; defense consultant; author |
| Andrea Barrett | 1974 | Author; National Book Award winner; MacArthur Fellow |
| Mark J. Bennett | 1976 | Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit |
| John Kelly III | 1976 | Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research |
| Rich Templeton | 1980 | Chairman, president and CEO of Texas Instruments |
| David Stern | 1982 | Philanthropist; activist; CEO of Equal Justice Works and president of the Stern Family Fund |
| David B. Haviland | 1983 | Physics professor, member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Nobel Committee for Physics |
| Ilene Landress | 1983 | Emmy-award winning television and film producer. Co-executive producer for HBO's The Sopranos. |
| Sue Goldie | 1984 | MacArthur Fellow |
| Devin Wenig | 1988 | President and CEO at eBay |
| Chris Sheridan | 1989 | Writer and television producer noted for his work on Family Guy |
| Andy Miller | 1990 | Corporate executive and entrepreneur |
| David S. Sachar | 1992 | US Army Veteran, Gastroenterologist, Atrium Health |
| Dylan Ratigan | 1994 | Television journalist; host of MSNBC's Morning Meeting with Dylan Ratigan |
| Nikki Stone | 1995 | Olympian; first American to win a gold medal in inverted aerial skiing; motivational speaker |
| Rawson Marshall Thurber | 1997 | Screenwriter; director |
| Ben Schwartz | 2003 | Actor and comedian, known for House of Lies and Parks and Recreation |
| Phillip Chorba | 2005 | Actor, on cast of Silver Linings and Concussion |
| Joanna Stern | 2006 | Senior personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal |
| Nancy Borowick | 2007 | American artist, photographer, and author. |
| Shayne Gostisbehere | 2015 | NHL defenseman for the Carolina Hurricanes |
| Yiluen Zhang | 2015 | Tufts Medical Center Psychiatry student rotator of the month, October 2023 |
| Jake Fishman | 2019 | American-Israeli baseball player for the Miami Marlins and for Team Israel |
| Emma White | 2019 | American former professional racing cyclist and Olympic bronze medalist. |

## Select gallery

* Frederick W. Seward, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State under Lincoln and Johnson
* Henry W. Halleck, General-in-Chief of the Union Armies
* Robert Toombs, first Confederate States Secretary of State
* Ward Hunt, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1873-1882
* Robert P. Patterson, U.S. Secretary of War under Harry S. Truman
* Franklin H. Giddings, "Father of American sociology"
* Neil Abercrombie, seventh Governor of Hawaii
* John Bigelow, Minister to France under Lincoln
* Daniel Butterfield, Union General in the Civil War
* Joseph M. Carey, governor of Wyoming, 1911-1915
* Gordon Gould, developer of the laser
* Ira Harris, member of the U.S. Senate, 1861-1867
* John F. Hartranft, governor of Pennsylvania, 1873-1879
* Franklin B. Hough, first chief of the US Division of Forestry
* Henry James, Sr., philosopher and author
* Fitz Hugh Ludlow, author of The Hasheesh Eater and Union's alma mater
* Lewis Henry Morgan, "Father of American anthropology"
* John W. Nevin, president of Franklin and Marshall College, 1866-1876
* Clarkson N. Potter, president of the American Bar Association (1881–1882) and US Congressman from New York (1869–1875)
* Laurenus C. Seelye, first president of Smith College, 1875-1910
* John Canfield Spencer, U.S. Secretary of War and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under President John Tyler
* William Stillman, journalist, artist, photographer, and diplomat
* Henry Philip Tappan, first President of the University of Michigan, 1852-1863
* Jim Tedisco, Minority Leader of the New York State Assembly from 2005 to 2009
* Francis Wayland, president of Brown University, 1827-1855