Sean's great-great grandfather, William A. Colledge-the original Colledge that came here-immigrated to the United States from Glasgow, Scotland in 1887 to Michigan (born 1856, has records of a graduate degree in in London, graduating in 1886). In 1890, he married June Wilson, whose father was the State Treasurer of Illinois for 30 years. He got his Doctorate of Theology in Michigan in 1892. They moved to Illinois, and he taught at Columbia College, downtown, for years (the "Columbia College of Expression") where he was a professor of English Language and Literature (and wrote books! Like encyclopedias about "every department of human knowledge".) He and June had a single child, Edward. June died and Edward went on to marry Frances Marshall in Illinois. At some point, the family moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where William died in 1927, and where the Colledge family took root.
The weird thing (yes, I was getting to that) is that William Colledge commissioned an architect named Dwight Perkins to build him a house in Evanston in 1906 (the William A. Colledge House). And that house is two blocks from the place I take his great-great-great granddaughter to Wiggleworms class. Yeah-what are the odds that someone from Scotland that lived in Illinois for a part of his life and live the rest and have generations of family born in Florida would have someone 5 generations later move back to where he lived (completely unwittingly) and take a baby great-great-great-granddaughter to class steps from where her American heritage began? One of those mind-blowing things.
The William A. Colledge House in Evanston:
The St. Matthews Episcopal Church where Addie takes music class, and where William A. Colledge could have been a member:
1 comments:
I love this! And I love your family. :)
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