Date of Birth: November 24, 1825
Birth Location: Decatur County, IN, USA
Major Study: Law
Graduation Year(s): 1847, 1857
Degree(s) Earned: Bachelor of Laws, Masters (Honorary)
Date of Death: June 6, 1929
Death Location: Greensburg, IN, USA
The longest living of IU’s First 200 graduates, James Bentley Lathrop lived to the ripe old age of one hundred and three years and seven months. He made his first trip to Bloomington in a wagon. He graduated from IU in 1847 with a law degree, then received an honorary master’s degree from IU in 1857.
A minister of the Gospel, Lathrop served as a traveling minister for the Methodist church. From 1864 to 1880, he was a presiding elder in Indianapolis. He retired from active ministry in 1884 to manage his elderly father’s estate, but remained in lay ministry. From age eighty to age ninety-two, he was president of the Citizens National Bank of Greensburg, and remained on its board of directors. At age eighty-nine, he wrote to the IU Alumni Quarterly that he still attended to his bank business every day.
Lathrop married Mary C. Butler in 1848. They had 4 children. He outlived his only sibling, his wife, and their first three children.
