John Russell Colvin - Family

Family

Colvin married Emma Sophia, daughter of Wetenhall Sneyd, a vicar in England; they had ten children, many of whom continued the family connection with India. Bazett Wetenhall, Elliott Graham, and Walter Mytton all passed distinguished careers in India, and a fourth, Clement Sneyd, C.S.I., was secretary of the public works department of the India Office in London. The third son, named after Lord Auckland, was lieutenant-governor of the North-West Provinces and Oudh. He published a biography of his father in 1895, and in 1905 gave a stained glass East window to the church of St. Mary at Soham, both as a thanksgiving for the termination of the Second Boer War, and as a permanent memorial to his father.

Colvin's elder brother, Bazett David, in 1847 inherited their father's estate at The Grove, Little Bealing, near Ipswich, which thus became the childhood home of Sidney Colvin, who grew up to be a critic, curator, and great friend of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Colvin's grand-daughter Brenda (1897–1981) was an important landscapte architect, author of standard works in the field and a force behind its professionalisation. She had no children, but another of Colvin's grandchildren founded his own line: Clement Sneyd's son ended up as Admiral Sir Ragnar Colvin, KBE, CB, and fathered John Horace Ragnar Colvin, the Cold War diplomat. The most recent generation is the Australian journalist Mark Colvin.