Among the men in Lehigh’s inaugural graduating class of 1869 was Miles Rock, a Civil War veteran who received a degree in civil engineering. He was said to have carried a copy of Asa Gray’s Manual of Botany in his knapsack during the war, and at commencement, he spoke about Lehigh’s trees.

A year after graduation, when an Alumni Association was formed, Rock became its first president.

Rock gained prominence as head of the Guatemala Commission from 1883 to 1898, when he worked to determine the boundary between Guatemala and Mexico. “It was due to his knowledge, his determination and pluck” that Guatemala secured its substantial land rights under threat of war, wrote the Lehigh Alumni Bulletin.

Earlier, Rock worked in the U.S. hydrographic office, where he determined latitude and longitude in the West Indies and Central America, and as an assistant astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory.