Armstead Otey Grubb

Armstead Otey Grubb (March 14, 1903 – December 5, 1968) was an American educator who served as professor of French and Spanish and as head librarian at Lincoln University in Oxford, Pennsylvania. From 1957 to 1960, Grubb served as acting president of Lincoln University. He was robbed and murdered outside his home on the university's campus in 1968. He received a BA in modern languages with highest honors from Princeton University in 1925, spending a summer at the University of Dijon. He received a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1928. Privately printed in 1937, Grubb's dissertation examined French sports neologisms. Writing in Language, Roland G. Kent praised Grubb's monograph as a "valuable contribution to lexicology."

Grubb taught French for ten years at the William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia before joining Lincoln University's faculty as a professor of modern languages in 1937. Grubb served as acting president of Lincoln University from 1957 to 1960 after President Horace Mann Bond resigned. He was a member of the American Library Association and the American Association of University Professors.

Grubb married Marianna Priest on December 27, 1928. She died in 1962. The couple had one daughter, born circa 1936.

Murder

Crime Grubb was murdered on the evening of December 5, 1968, after returning home from a visit to Mrs. Katherine Wilson, whom friends reported that Grubb planned to marry. His long-time neighbor, Marjorie Cole, reported that Grubb habitually walked his cat at night. The cat was nowhere to be found. Two of the suspects knew Grubb—the professor had recently reported Richard Twyman to the police for breaking into his house, and he had given Frankie Twyman a check for five dollars on December 3. The suspects' father, farmer Earl Twyman, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that this gift reflected Grubb's customary generosity. The Twymans lived half a mile away from the scene of the crime. In 1974, Twyman received a furlough from the state penitentiary and assaulted a young woman in Oxford less than five hours after his release. He was returned to prison.