Ancestors

Dorothy Colville

Dorothy Colville was born at Carbondale, Pennsylvania, on 20 December 1896, the date cut on her gravestone. The censuses of 1900, 1910 and 1920 put her birth a year later, in 1897. Her father, William Thomas Colville, had taught modern languages at Kenyon College in Ohio. By 1897 he was treasurer of the Hendrick Manufacturing Company at Carbondale, the firm founded by her mother's father, Eli E. Hendrick. Her mother was Lillian Belle Hendrick.

She grew up at Carbondale with three siblings. Her brother Kenneth Hendrick Colville had been born at Gambier, Ohio, the Kenyon college town, in 1891. Her sister Jessie was born in 1895 and her brother William Thomas Jr. in 1902. The family lived in the city's first ward, at 101 Lincoln Avenue. Her grandfather Hendrick, a former mayor of Carbondale, died in 1909, when she was twelve.

Dorothy went to Wellesley College a year behind her sister Jessie, class of 1918. She graduated with the class of 1919. Her senior portrait, made by the Bachrach studio, is on page 94 of the 1919 Legenda, the senior yearbook. She was president of the Wellesley College Symphony Orchestra and played first violin. Her brother's wife, Rebecca Meaker Colville, was also a Wellesley woman, class of 1916.

In January 1920 she was still living with her parents at Carbondale. That year she married Benjamin George Dann, who had been born in Kansas and had grown up in West Virginia and Maryland. Their first child, Dorothy, was born at Carbondale on 19 July 1921, "in her grandmother's house," as the daughter's obituary put it. That was probably the Colville house on Lincoln Avenue. Benjamin Jr. followed in 1924 and David Phillips in 1925, both at Carbondale.

By 1929 the Danns had moved to Maplewood, New Jersey, where their daughter Christina was born that July. Maplewood remained home. The family was there in 1930, at 39 Claremont Avenue in 1942, and still there in 1950, when her husband was working as a sales representative. The 1950 census index has her born in Kansas in 1899, which is wrong on both counts.

Two of her daughters went to Wellesley after her. Dee graduated in 1942 as a Durant Scholar and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and later served the college for twelve years as a trustee. Tina graduated in 1951. Her son Benjamin Jr. went to MIT and in 1948 joined Hendrick Manufacturing, her grandfather's firm, as plant engineer.

Her husband died in February 1966. Dorothy Colville Dann died on 31 January 1986, aged 89. Where she died has not been found. She was buried at Willow View Cemetery in Clifford Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, with her husband and near her parents and her Hendrick grandparents. Her flat stone reads "DOROTHY COLVILLE DANN / DECEMBER 20, 1896 / JANUARY 31, 1986."

If Dorothy Colville is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Dorothy Colville (1896-1986)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/dorothy-colville-1896-1986-4419e4.