The Colvin family, for the purposes of this article, are that group of people descended from James Colvin (born 1768), a merchant trading between London and Calcutta during the East India Company. This Anglo-Indian family was intimately involved with the British Raj, first as traders and then as administrators and soldiers. Their descendants continued in service to the British Empire and later in some of its constituent countries, e.g. one was an Australian admiral.
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Bazett David Colvin (1805–1871)[1] was the eldest son of James. In 1847 he inherited his father's estate at The Grove, Little Bealing, near Ipswich[2], which thus became the childhood home of his son Sidney Colvin (1845–1927)[3], who grew up to be a critic, curator, and great friend of Robert Louis Stevenson.
John Russell Colvin (1807 – 1857), the second son, rose to be lieutenant-governor of the North-West Provinces of British India during the mutiny of 1857, at the height of which he died.
He married Emma Sophia, daughter of Wetenhall Sneyd, a vicar in England; they had ten children[4], 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, Auckland (1838–1908), was lieutenant-governor of the North-West Provinces and Oudh, and also served in Egypt. He co-founded the Colvin Taluqdars' College in Lucknow; he also published a biography of his father in 1895[5].
Elliott Graham's daughter Brenda (1897–1981)[6] was an important landscape architect, author of standard works in the field and a force behind its professionalisation.
Clement Sneyd's son ended up as Admiral Sir Ragnar Colvin, KBE, CB, and fathered John Horace Ragnar Colvin[7] , the Cold War diplomat. The most recent generation is the Australian journalist Mark Colvin.