ORIGINS
& CONNECTIONS FOR THE NAME 'COLBY'
by Jeffrey Anderson
EMAIL: jdanders@colby.edu
WHY?
For some time I have been
curious about the etymology and surrounding social history of the name 'Colby'. I grew up in the Midwest and until I applied for a faculty
position here some years ago I had never heard of Colby College,
though I had heard of Colby cheese. For my past
ignorance, I apologize and seek to make amends for my youthful folly. I began my recompense by seeking the connection between
the college and the cheese, then expanded my horizons
in the tradition of all great revolutionary investigations.
I came to realize that words
do not just move through space and time by some destiny, but gain momentum as
real people make choices and shape history. Furthermore,
I learned that a single surname is really a concatenation of rich, ironic, and elaborate connections. At first many names do just get tossed around
and land where they may by chance, but eventually take on sacred significance
to those who own them. The name 'Colby' itself is now
an intellectual property, a conveyer of profound human memories, an object of
beauty on various commodities, and, last but not least, a mark of academic
excellence.
Through its rich and complex
history, though, the name 'Colby' has traveled across great expanses to
interconnect Vikings (my ancestors), England, Puritans, charcoal, Salem witch
trials, a U.S. president, Massachusetts, Mormonism, a college in Maine, a town
in Wisconsin, the cheese, Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy, the
"other" New England college bearing the name, and a town and
community college in Kansas.
Before moving on, I extend
much gratitude to all the Colby descendents too numerous to list who have responded to this site with
friendly suggestions, queries, and
needed corrections.
COLBY COLLEGE
The college that became Colby
was chartered in 1813 as the Maine
Literary and Theological Institution, though the founder Jeremiah Chaplin did
not actually hold his first class until 1818. The name
was changed to Waterville College in 1821 marking the transition to a true
college, that is, a degree-granting institution recognized by the legislature
of the then new State of Maine. Later the college was renamed for Gardner
Colby, a Maine-born, Boston
area businessman and philanthropist who endowed the college with $50,000 in
1864. One of the conditions for the gift required the
college to match his donation with $100,000 from other sources. Primarily with the aid of faculty and the town of Waterville, the college
met the target within two years. As a result of the
gift and donation campaign the college averted imminent financial collapse
brought on by declining enrollments throughout the Civil War.
In the weeks after the war broke out in 1861, droves of Colby men
enlisted for service. The first group out of Waterville joined the Maine
Third Infantry, Companies G and H, and fought their first battle at Bull Run. Many Colby students
were casualties of this and other battles to follow. For
periods of time during the war the college actually had to close down for lack
of students. After recovery from many college
sacrifices to the war, in 1867 the Maine
legislature ratified as the new name for the college 'Colby
University', which endured until 1899
when the president and trustees changed the name to 'Colby College'. The correction aimed to bring Colby's name into conformity
with the emerging convention reserving the term 'university'
for institutions offering graduate degrees.
THE COLBY FAMILY
Gardner Colby (1810-79) had lived the hardest
years of his childhood in Waterville.
His gift was thus largely one of
gratitude to the town and the college for helping his mother
recover from poverty. His father
Josiah had once been very successful but lost his entire fortune in the War of
1812 and then died in 1814 leaving his wife Sarah with four very young children
to raise on her own. Josiah
apparently had been successful in business prior to the Embargo Act, a measure advanced
by Madison, a short hawkish southern president and political enemy of many New England businessmen. One
version of Waterville
history holds that after Josiah went broke he worked briefly on Silver Street in
potash production, which was one of the dirtiest occupations of the time and a
great waste of trees. A few years later
after Josiah had passed on, the founder and first president of the college came
to Sarah's aid. Through his professional
and church connections in the Boston area,
Jeremiah Chaplin helped Sarah move to Charleston,
Massachusetts and open a store
there. Working with his mother, Gardner
acquired some of the business sense that would take him from rags to riches,
first with his own store in Boston
and then with expanding shipping, railroad, and woolen mill enterprises. From religious seeds planted by President Chaplin's
efforts, his bond to the Baptist church also intensified and expanded into
philanthropic works. In 1879, Gardner Colby passed away, bequeathing an
additional $200,000 to the college. Since 1864 he had
also served as a trustee of the college. The Colby
family place on the board then passed to his son Gardner R. Colby (1879-1889),
followed by Charles L. Colby (1889-96), Joseph L. Colby (1897-1918), and
Bainbridge Colby (1932-42).
The Colby family tree has
deep roots and broad branches. Gardner
Colby was the great-great-great-great-great grandson of two Puritans who first
planted the seed of the Colby name in North America. In 1630, Anthony Colby left his home in Horbling, Lincolnshire (England) to sail on the Arbella,
the flagship of the Winthrop Fleet, which
carried 700 Puritan passengers from Yarmouth, England to Salem. Anthony traveled to the colony as an
indentured servant to a Simon Bradstreet who settled in Cambridge.
At some point in the next couple years Anthony married a Susannah
Waterman, a widow whose birth
name still eludes genealogists.
By 1664 Anthony was able to own some land and then took the oath of a
Freeman.
For those who do not know,
John Winthrop was of course a major governor of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony and a very devout Puritan. He
opposed giving too much freedom to the people who had escaped England to find more religious
freedom. In this spirit of conformity he presided over
the famous trial that found Anne Hutchinson guilty and banished her from the
colony. Winthrop
and some hard-nosed Puritan males did not like Anne and charged her with
"traducing the ministers." She had been
advocating for reforms based on religion as an inner state of grace rather than
an external code of strict moral laws enforced with punishments.
In 1820 when the State of Maine chartered Waterville
College as a degree granting
institution it became one of the first New England
colleges to remove denominational barriers to enrolling students and hiring
faculty. Baptists in particular were excluded from
most institutions to the south, such as Harvard. This
is one of the reasons Jeremiah Chaplin and his fellow Baptists founded the
college in the first place. The result was that the
college became a place for freer theological and social thought than the other,
more conservative institutions in New England. Thus, the college graduated many who became clergy in
other denominations, such as Elijah Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister. Ironically, though, one condition of Gardner Colby's endowment in 1864 held that
the president and a majority of the faculty must belong to a Baptist church,
the faith that was so strong in his life and philanthropic work.
Most Colby families in the
U.S. descend from Anthony and Susannah who eventually had the good sense to
settle away from Salem and Boston in Amesbury-Salisbury, Massachusetts (Essex
County) near where I-95 and I-495 meet today. Undoubtedly
unaware of its historical significance for the "COLBY" stickers on
their back windows, most Colby students pass this fork on their northern
migrations from the eastern megalopolis to Waterville. Anthony
ran a saw mill (i.e., cutting up trees) there and eventually bought a house in
Amesbury from the first town clerk named Macy who wanted to sell his property
in a hurry and move out of town. Macy could no longer
tolerate the Puritan neighbors who persecuted him for harboring Quakers in his
home.
By the way, a young man named
John Lovejoy also sailed on the Arbella. He arrived in North America
a conscripted child laborer. The irony, which some
readers will already discern, is tied to the Lovejoy name. After
serving his term, John settled in Amesbury where he became a neighbor of the
first Colby family. As generations passed, the Colby
and Lovejoy family trees grew and even converged at least twice. Sparing the details, the Colby and Lovejoy families are
related.
In Alton, Illinois
in 1837, a Colby graduate and Presbyterian minister named Elijah Lovejoy was
shot five times by a mob opposing his newspaper's anti-slavery views. Elijah was a seventh generation descendant of John Lovejoy
and a renowned abolitionist.
The college eventually
recognized Elijah Lovejoy, one its most famous graduates, by giving his name to
an annual national award for journalism and the building in which I now sit. Having grown up in the Midwest near the Mississippi in a
Presbyterian household, I knew of Elijah Lovejoy before I came to Maine, though,
I admit, the name Colby, aside from the cheese, was not so familiar. I have since compensated for my youthful ignorance on that
count.
For curiosity's sake, some
other famous Colby descendants include the author Laura Ingalls
Wilder (of Little House on the Prairie fame), President Chester A.
Arthur, former CIA director William E. Colby, Joseph Smith, founder of
Mormonism, and Vice President Richard Cheney. Another
descendant named Bainbridge Colby served as Secretary of State (1920-21) in the
Wilson administration and later as a Trustee for
Colby College. This
information and other curious tidbits can be found on the Colby Family Page:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~colby/colbyfam/
ANGLO-NORSE ETYMOLOGY UNRAVELED
The surname Colby itself
originated from a place name in England. According to one source it is a hybrid Anglo-Norse form
derived from Cald-byr, meaning 'cold settlement'. By accident this is fitting for the college, but another
source suggests a gloss as 'place of a man named Kohl', some Viking guy now
forgotten by history. According to a third version,
which I like best for the tree connection, the word derives from a Viking word
for 'coal place' (i.e., a source of charcoal). Charcoal
was rendered from slowly burning wood (from trees). The
process was a major cause of deforestation throughout the British
Isles, as well as the entire European continent.
See the site for Family Chronicle- Surname Origin List:
There are currently three
towns with the specific name Colby in the United Kingdom. One
is in Cumbria
in the far north, another in Norfolk on the
eastern tip, and a third on the Isle of Man. None of
these have any connection whatsoever to Anthony, Sarah, Gardner, or the college. Neither do they have any link to the cheese, which was my
original assumption considering all the cheeses with town names in England. Getting back to more relevant issues, there are two tiny
English towns bearing the name 'Coleby', an alternative
spelling amidst the early confusion about how to spell things correctly. Apparently even Shakespeare weathered some confusion about
how to spell his own name correctly. Anyway, one Coleby is in North Lincolnshire, another in Lincolnshire. The latter is not far from Horbling,
the hometown of Anthony. It is thus from Coleby, Lincolnshire, a small village of less than 400
people just a few miles south of Lincoln, that the name Colby originated. For those of you thinking about it, yes there is a Lincoln connection to the
president, the logs, and the middle name of a Colby descendant who served as
trustee of the college. So, there you have it.
You can find all these towns
at the United Kingdom
Multi-Map website by typing in "Colby" or "Coleby"
in the town space of the search form:
http://uk.multimap.com/map/places.cgi
COLBY CHEESE CONNECTIONS
Now for the very big question
that sparked my research in the first place. Most
people have heard of Colby cheese, but what is the connection to Colby College? It is actually quite close. The
cheese was invented in Colby,
Wisconsin (pop. 1,532) for which
it was named. The town in turn had been named for Gardner Colby, the Colby College
namesake. In the 1870s, Gardner and his son Charles
Lewis Colby moved west for a time to head construction of the Wisconsin
Central Railroad. Later Charles became a major player
in Wisconsin Republican politics. Some say that Colby, Wisconsin
(pop. 1,532) was named for Charles not Gardner. Pearl Vorland, representative of
the Colby Historical Society, forwarded documentary evidence for this theory. The Wisconsin
Central: A Centennial View (1971) maintains that the town was named for
Charles. This is consistent with the fact that the
tracks did not extend to the area until after Charles had taken over as head of
the railroad. Pearl
added that Charles also visited the town quite often. Thus,
she and I believe Charles deserves the renown, but other documents support the Gardner Colby origin theory.
Anyway, today cheese making
is the second leading employer in Colby,
Wisconsin. Corrugated
box manufacturing (i.e., cardboard made from trees) is the leading employer.
For more on Colby, Wisconsin see:
http://www.clark-cty-wi.org/colby.htm
COLBY COLLEGE
V. COLBY-SAWYER COLLEGE
Colby family connections also
apply to the New Hampshire
college bearing the name hyphenated with the name Sawyer. In
the 1970s, the hyphenation resolved legal action taken by Colby
College to claim exclusive use of the
name in New England.
Unsuccessful but curious
arguments by the New Hampshire
faction drew attention to the fact that the name Colby had been used for nearly
a century. The institution that began as New London Academy
was renamed Colby
Academy in 1878 to honor
Susan Colby, the first principal, and her family, which continued to support
the school for several generations. Susan and Gardner
have the same great-great-great-great grandfather. His
name was Isaac, son of the original Anthony and Susannah.
After the school was founded,
Susan married James Burnham Colgate of the famous Colgate family that became
wealthy through the first mass marketing of soap. Susan's
husband's donations greatly assisted the academy. By
the way, he also donated to the founding of Colgate Academy,
which he named in honor of his parents. It later
became a university retaining that name.
Colby Academy
remained a coeducational secondary school until 1928 when it became Colby Junior
College for women. In
1974 the college became a four-year institution offering baccalaureate degrees. In that transition, the name was changed briefly to Colby College
- New Hampshire. Colby College of Maine
then convinced a federal judge to grant a temporary injunction. After an unsuccessful attempt to gain a permanent
injunction, Colby College won an appeal decision from the First Circuit
U.S.
Court of Appeals. The court ruled that appropriation
of the name was an intrusion on the original college's identity and good will,
as well as public interest "in preserving the integrity of individual
accomplishment and reputation." The New Hampshire school then tried to take the name Colby
Women's College, but another federal judge ruled that that name, too, would
only increase the confusion of Colby
College's identity with
the newer institution. In a compromise, the name Colby-Sawyer College
was adopted and stood the test of Colby
College's legal claim
over its name and identity. The hyphenated form was
recognition for the leadership of President H. Leslie Sawyer in founding the
four-year college. As a result, to my knowledge,
Colby-Sawyer is one among only several in the nation bearing the name of a
woman directly instrumental in its history.
For a history of the "other" New England
college with the name 'Colby' see:
http://www.colby-sawyer.edu/about/history.html
COLBY COMMUNITY
COLLEGE
Now for the question of Colby Community
College, named after a Colby who also descended
from Susannah and Anthony, but who had no great role in the history of college
per se. This use of the name has gone without
challenge from the original institution to put the words 'Colby' and 'college'
together.
Following some queries on the
subject, I have discovered that Colby, Kansas
(pop. 5,386) was named for the descendant named James Ritner
(J.R.) Colby (1839-1919). Gardner and J.R. descend from a common ancestor eight generations removed. Probably the event in J.R.
Colby's life that brought him the most fame was actually having a town named
after him. He was born in Pennsylvania,
served as a private in the civil war, and actually received some real estate in
the deal to name the town in Kansas
after him. Chris Moore of the Prairie Art Museum and
Thomas (KS) County Historical Society supplied me with the following story
about how the town was named for JR Colby, as he is known in local history:
JR
Colby was a civil war veteran, and had a homestead in 1880, 3 miles south of
where Colby now stands. He was largely responsible for
the post office being established on a nearby homestead. In
1885 the Colby Townsite Co., whose members were
mostly from Kansas City,
picked the site for their town 3 miles north of JR Colby's homestead, in order
to be on the railroad. Not wishing to leave any chance
of a county seat fight, they made him a deal.
They
told Colby that if he would give up the idea of starting a town on his own
homestead, they would give him a business location and a residence location in
their town. JR insisted that they name the new town
Colby, and took the deal.
Unlike Gardner, the name recognition cost him
nothing, and he even got some land in the deal. Apparently
there is much more information about JR Colby at the Prairie
Museum of Art and History in Colby, Kansas.
Almost a century after JR
founded the town, the community college there took the name Colby, thus
becoming the third post-secondary institution in the U.S. bearing the name. CCC does not have everything the
oldest Colby College has to offer, of course, but it does have a large
performing arts center, intercollegiate horse show and rodeo teams, a national
championship wrestling team, and programs of study in agriculture and veterinary
science, just to name a few.
OTHER PLACES & THINGS NAMED COLBY
There are a number of other
unpopulated places or unincorporated towns with the name Colby in other states,
including Maine (in Aroostook
County near Caribou), Minnesota, Colorado, Kentucky, Ohio, New Hampshire, and Washington. Many towns from Medford, MA to Oakland,
CA have streets or avenues named
Colby, too. The most difficult Colby Street to find in the whole world
is in Waterville, Maine itself. It is
near the railroad tracks and the old Colby campus site. About
the only thing on Colby Street
is the District Court. So, for anyone from the Colby College
community who has to go there for any reason, be assured no one you know will
see you or your vehicle there.
For canine enthusiasts, there
is a breed of pit bull (i.e. American Pit Bull Terrier) named the "Colby
Dog" after John Pritchard Colby who developed the strain in New England in
1889. There are dogs in the line named Colby's Emjay, Colby's Primo, Colby's Judo, Colby's Buffy, etc. More information about this world-renowned strain and the
pedigree line is available from Louis B. Colby's on-line article "American
Pit Bull Terriers: The Colby Strain Since 1889" at:
http://www.colbypitbull.com/
There are also businesses
bearing the name Colby:
One is the Colby
Manufacturing Company based in Pennsylvania
featuring surgical fluid control products and patient labeling systems to
prevent wrong-site surgeries:
http://www.colbymfg.com/
Another is the Rocky Mountain
Colby Pipe Company featuring special purpose PVC, ABS, and fiber optic cable
pipes at: http://www.rmcp.com/contact.html
A third is Colby Instruments,
Inc. of California
specializing in something called delay line technology: http://www.colby-inc.com/
For those who have wondered
where the term "Camp
Colby" comes from,
there is such a place, two in fact:
(1) Camp
Colby on Saranac Lake, NY:
http://www.dec.state.ny.us/website/education/colby.html
(2) Camp
Colby in the Angeles
Mountains of California: http://cal-pac.org/camping/colby/
Just a few other random
connections: Colby is the 703rd most popular male first name, the 4,081st most
popular female first name, and 2,642nd most common family name in the U.S. The name Anderson
is much more popular.
More useful
knowledge like this is available at: http://www.placesnamed.com/c/o/colby.asp
Published Works Used Here and
Suggested for Further Reading:
Marriner, Ernest C. Kennebec Yesterdays. Waterville, ME: Colby College
Press, 1954.
Marriner, Ernest C. The
History of Colby College. Waterville, ME: Colby College
Press, 1963.
Marriner, Ernest C. The
Strider Years. Waterville,
ME: Colby
College Press, 1980.
Whittemore, Edwin C. The
Centennial History of Waterville. Waterville, ME:
Executive Committee of the Centennial Celebration, 1902.
Please share any reactions,
other connections, or new information with me at:
jdanders@colby.edu
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