page_title: Ward Melville
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Ward Melville / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Miss Dorothy Bigelow, Lallie Charles Photo Reproduction Number LC-DIG-ggbain-04915 (digital file from original neg.)
context_page_description: John Ward Melville was an American philanthropist and businessman active in the "Three Villages" in western Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. He donated 400 acres of land and money to establish Stony Brook University in 1957, which has developed as a major public research institution. He played a major role in the development of Melville Corporation.
context_section_description: After joining his father in his company in 1909, Melville married Dorothy Bigelow (1894–1989), a daughter of Isabella Lyall and Charles Emerson Bigelow. In 1924, the Melvilles purchased a property in Old Field on Long Island.  They expanded the home, a Cape Cod style cottage built by Alexander Hamilton Jr., a grandson of the first Treasury Secretary, and his wife, Elizabeth Nicoll Hamilton, into a 22-room mansion which they called Wide Water.  The living room at Wide Water is believed to be the original cottage. The couple had two sons (Frank and David B. Melville) and two daughters, including:
  Margaret Melville (1919–2000), who married James Hancock Blackwell Jr. and were cofounders of the equestrian American Driving Society.
  Ruth Melville (c. 1920–1995), a philanthropist who married F. Henry Berlin Jr.
  Melville died in 1977 and is buried in Setauket at the Caroline Church and Cemetery.
caption: Miss Dorothy Bigelow, Lallie Charles Photo
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