Harvey Teper Woodman was born on September 12, 1827, in Corinth, Maine.

He was a naturalist. He left home at the age of ten and went to Boston, where he worked in the drugstore and studied chemistry and natural history. He then moved to St. Louis, and in 1849, to New York City. For thirteen years, he studied the coral reefs of Florida and investigated the Gulf Stream and currents at Dry Tortugas for the government. For more than forty years, he collected shells, corals, and fossils and helped build the collections of museums of the natural history of Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, and other universities and private collectors. Woodman was also one of the experts of the Smithsonian Institution. The collections in the Museum of Natural History at Princeton and in New York are named after him. Woodman gained international fame by publishing his theory that America populated Europe and not vice versa. He based it on the geological formation, the fossils, and prehistoric bones found on the American continent. In 1869, Woodman founded the Iowa Institute of Science and Art and served as its vice-president. He was an intimate friend of Presidents Lincoln and Grant.

In 1852, he married Catherine Charlotte Rawson (1829–1901). He died on May 22, 1903, in Mt. Vernon, New York.

Educator, missionary, and historian Edward Woodley was born in Montreal. He graduated with honors from McGill University in 1900, then completed the theological course at the affiliated Canadian Congregational College in 1902. That same year he married a fellow McGill student, Edythe Anne Garlick (Annie), who had graduated with first class standing in Greek and Latin. The couple left for missionary work in India, where Rev. Woodley taught English and theology while learning the language, and his wife cared for their two young children. Mrs. Woodley’s poor health required them to return to Canada for a few years, but they went back and tried to continue work in India; again they had to return because of Mrs. Woodley’s health. Rev. Woodley became a pastor in Danville, Quebec, and from 1908 to 1911 and lectured at Canadian Congregational College in Montreal on comparative religions and theology. In 1911 he became principal of St. Francis Collegiate School in Richmond, Quebec, and also became president of the Canadian Congregational Foreign Missionary Society. The family then headed to Turkey to serve with the Central Turkey Mission. After their return in 1919, both continued teaching, and in 1930, Edward was appointed Special Research Officer for the Quebec Department of Education. For the next decades he wrote, compiled and edited a number of history books and textbooks, mostly on French Canada, from “Legends of French Canada” (1931) to “Untold Tales from Old Quebec (1949). He died of leukemia in 1955. One of his daughters, Elsie Caroline Woodley, followed her parents footsteps in graduating from McGill and becoming a teacher, and she also published a book of poetry, “Bittersweet,” in 1930.

William Woodhead was born in Devonport, England, and educated at Christ's Hospital, Oxford, the University of Alberta and the University of Chicago. In 1924 he became Hiram Mills Professor of the Classics Department at McGill University. From 1934 to 1936 Woodhead served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science; from 1943 to 1945 he was Chairman of the Humanities Group. He started the university scholarships programme and took an active interest in providing for the education of the children of McGill's staff. He was Emeritus Professor of Classics from 1955 to 1957.