Index
Scholarships
The Daniel Burke Scholarship
The Daniel Burke Scholarship, established in 1964, is awarded with preference given first to a student from the public high school in Oxford, N.Y.; second to a resident of Chenango County; and third to a resident of New York State.
Daniel Burke was born in New Berlin, N.Y., in 1866, and spent his childhood in Oxford, N.Y. He was a lawyer and former president of the American Bible Society, where he held the position longer than any one prior to him. Also, during his presidency, the group’s distribution of bibles rose from 12 million a year in 104 languages to 24 million in 308 languages. Burke even presented a set of bibles in 78 languages to President Eisenhower for the White House library in 1954, to which Eisenhower flipped to a random page and exclaimed to his wife, Mamie: “Look, Swahili!”
Following his graduation from Hamilton in 1893, Daniel was admitted to the New York bar in 1896 and opened his own law office in New York City (which eventually became the firm of Burke & Burke) in 1928. Daniel was also the director (1926-67) and eventually chairman of the RT French Company in Rochester, N.Y., a manufacturer of condiments. Daniel received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Hamilton in 1936, the same year he joined the College’s Board of Trustees. He served as board chair from 1938 to 1946 and was elected as a life trustee in 1952. Hamilton’s Burke Library was named in his honor.
Several members of Daniel Burke’s family have graduated from Hamilton, including children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
June 2014
Please note: The named scholarships profiled on these pages support the College’s generous need-based financial aid commitment. These donor-funded scholarships help ensure the Hamilton promise of keeping education affordable through meeting a student’s full demonstrated financial need.
