Prof. William Thomas Colville
William Thomas Colville was born at Mount Vernon, Knox County, Ohio, on 27 June 1849. His parents were Thomas Colville and Sarah Patrick, as his Pennsylvania death certificate records. His grandfather, James Colville, had been the first settler of Pleasant Township in Knox County, and his father farmed the old Colville homestead there and served as the township's justice of the peace.
He graduated from the Mount Vernon high school in 1870. He then went to Kenyon College at Gambier, a few miles east of Mount Vernon, and graduated with the class of 1874. Kenyon gave him the higher degree of A.M. in 1879. He stayed at the college as a teacher: instructor in modern languages from 1878 to 1880, then professor from 1881 to 1891. The 1881 History of Knox County lists him among the faculty as "William T. Colville, A. M., Instructor in German and French." The 1880 census shows him living with his parents in Pleasant Township. His younger brother Charles also went to Kenyon, graduating in 1880.
He also taught privately. Eli E. Hendrick, an oil refiner and manufacturer of Carbondale, Pennsylvania, had two daughters, Mary Emma and Lillian Belle. A county history of 1897 says both "received [their] early education under Professor Colville, a private tutor." When he tutored them is not stated. He married the younger, Lillian, about 1885 or 1886. The 1900 census says they had been married fourteen years.
The couple lived at Gambier. Their first child, Kenneth Hendrick Colville, was born there on 28 May 1891. That year Colville left Kenyon. By 1895 the family was at Carbondale, where their daughter Jessie was born. Dorothy followed in December 1896 and William Thomas Jr. in 1902.
At Carbondale he went into his father-in-law's business. The Hendrick Manufacturing Company made perforated metal screens and had been organized in 1885. The 1897 Portrait and Biographical Record of Lackawanna County describes him as treasurer of the company "and the confidential assistant of his father-in-law." His mother-in-law died at Philadelphia in 1895, and Eli Hendrick died in 1909.
The Colvilles lived in Carbondale's first ward through the censuses of 1900 to 1930, at 101 Lincoln Avenue. Both daughters went to Wellesley College, Jessie with the class of 1918 and Dorothy with the class of 1919. In 1920 Dorothy married Benjamin George Dann.
William Thomas Colville died at Carbondale on 22 September 1934, aged 85. He was buried at Willow View Cemetery in Clifford Township, Susquehanna County, where his wife and her parents also lie. His flat stone reads "WILLIAM T. COLVILLE / 1849 - 1934." Lillian survived him by nine years.
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Cite: Heirology, "Prof. William Thomas Colville (1849-1934)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/prof-william-thomas-colville-1849-1934-988de2.