Title
A Place in the Sun and Among the Stars: Reverend W. G. Colgrove
Files
Download Full Text
Description
W. G. Colgrove dedicated years of his life to the community of Western University and the city of London through his work with the Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. This story map walks readers through the life of W. G. Colgrove and his autobiographical scrapbook, A Place in the Sun.
Publication Date
4-19-2023
Publisher
Western Libraries
City
London, Ontario, Canada
Keywords
Story Map, Western University, Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory, Western Libraries, Astronomy, Biography, Local History
Disciplines
Astrophysics and Astronomy | Canadian History | Digital Humanities | History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Citation of this paper:
Churchill-Baird, N., & Tovey, M. (2023). A place in the sun and among the stars: Reverend William Gladstone Colgrove. [ArcGIS Story Map]. ArcGIS Online. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/colgrovestorymap/1/
Notes
W. G. Colgrove dedicated years of his life to the community of Western University and the city of London through his work with the Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. This story map walks readers through the life of W. G. Colgrove and his autobiographical scrapbook, A Place in the Sun.
William Gladstone Colgrove was born on February 26th, 1872, in Westminster Township, Middlesex County. Colgrove was a significant figure in the history of the Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory at Western University. Colgrove was a Londoner who grew up on a farm not far from the current campus of Western University. He later returned to London for his Master of Arts at the University of Ontario (UWO) after he received his Bachelor's Degree from McGill University. His thesis, "The Nature Of Moral Law" was the first thesis granted by UWO in 1909 and a digitized copy can be found here. He followed his graduate studies with a Bachelor of Divinity from the Boston University School of Theology. He was a minister and preacher in Massachusetts and southwestern Ontario for many years. Colgrove returned to London as a preacher and lived at 2 Christie Street.
He was a man of numerous interests and talents. He trained as a lithographer and then pursued numerous artistic expressions. Colgrove was a sculptor, poet, inventor, astronomer, and botanist. He was involved with the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada - London Centre and the London Sculptor's Guild. His many passions are showcased in his autobiographical scrapbook, A Place in the Sun: and Poems by One Who Tried Inspite of the Clouds. He also published a reference text for astronomy, A Ready Reference Handbook of the Solar System: A Concise Summary of Over 1,000 Interesting Items and Deductions (available for reading room use at Western Archives and Special Collections), and a collection of his poems, Spare-Time Poems (available for reading room use at Western Archives and Special Collections).
After retiring as minister, he continued to work at the University of Western Ontario through several roles. Colgrove supported the Geology Department as an assistant, he donated hundreds of botanical specimens to the Herbarium and served as a taxonomist with Western's Herbarium. In his retirement, Colgrove was a lecturer and summer school instructor for the Department of Astronomy. Through his work with Astronomy, he became the unofficial curator at the newly minted Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory which opened on October 25th, 1940. At Cronyn, Colgrove created astronomical models and instructional aids for other teachers of astronomy and amateur astronomers could purchase.
In 1939, Colgrove helped broker an agreement between UWO, London Life Company, and Luke Smith for the purchase of the Dresden Meteorite. The acquisition of the Dresden Meteorite was a boon to the soon to be opened Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory and Department of Mathematics and Astronomy. The Dresden Meteorite was displayed at the Observatory until the 1970s when it was moved to the Biology and Geology Building at UWO, where it remains to this day. A 3-D printed model made from a plaster cast that was given to London Life when the meteorite was purchased is on display at the Observatory today. For his work in bringing the Dresden Meteorite to Western University and his work with astronomical models, W. G. Colgrove was awarded the highest honour of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, the Chant Medal.
A partnership between Western Libraries and the Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory has produced an eBook version of Colgrove's autobiographical scrapbook on Scholarship@Western - it can be accessed here. Readers can also experience a digital flipbook version of the eBook from the page on Scholarship@Western. Members of the Research and Scholarly Communication team at Western Libraries created this digital version of the scrapbook from scans done by Aleeshia Carman. Special thanks goes to the Colgrove family for allowing the digitization and open sharing of this unique and valuable manuscript. This manuscript and Colgrove's life are the subject of this Story Map. A Place in the Sun and Among the Stars: Reverend William Gladstone Colgrove was created by Noah Churchill-Baird, a co-op student with Western Libraries, and Dr. Mark Tovey, the current curator of the Cronyn Observatory.
Thumbnail photo credit: London Free Press Collection of Photographic Negatives, April 17, 1950, Archives and Special Collections, Western University.