Clinton Scollard

Clinton Scollard (1860–1932) was an American poet and writer of fiction. He was a Professor of English at Hamilton College, and collaborator and husband of Jessie Belle Rittenhouse.

Life

Scollard was born at Clinton, New York on September 28, 1860, son of James Isaac and Mary Elizabeth (Stevens) Scollard. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1881, and later attended Harvard University, where his friends included poets Bliss Carman and Frank Dempster Sherman. At Hamilton, where he was a member of the Chi Psi fraternity, he played varsity baseball and is credited with introducing the curveball to college baseball.

After a period in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he spent a year at University of Cambridge in England. In 1888 he became an Associate Professor of English at Hamilton College, where he remained until 1896. Except for a further year in the English Department at Hamilton College in 1911, he devoted the rest of his life to creative writing. Hamilton granted him an honorary L.H.D. in 1906.

Corresponded with Martha Foote Crowe. Oley Speaks composed the song "Sylvia" to lyrics by Scollard.

On July 3, 1890 Scollard married Georgia Brown of Jackson, Michigan; they had one daughter Elizabeth Scollard Parlon, but they divorced in early 1924. On 20 March 1924 Scollard married fellow poet Jessie Belle Rittenhouse.[4] They had no children and he died in 1932.

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