Clinton Scollard

Clinton Scollard (1860–1932) was an American poet and writer of fiction. He was a Professor of English at Hamilton College.

Professional career

Scollard was born at Clinton, Oneida County, New York on September 18, 1860, son of James Isaac and Mary Elizabeth (Stevens) Scollard. He graduated from the Clinton Liberal Institute in 1877 and Hamilton College in 1881, and in 1881–1883 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 two years at the University of Cambridge in England. In 1888 he became an Associate Professor of English at Hamilton College, where he remained until 1896. He built the house at 70 College St. in Clinton.

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.

Associates

Scollard corresponded with Martha Foote Crowe. Oley Speaks composed the song "Sylvia" to lyrics by Scollard. Dagmar de Corval Rybner used Scollard’s text for her composition “A Song.”

Family

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 March 20, 1924, Scollard married fellow poet Jessie Belle Rittenhouse in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California." They had no children.