Rebecca Singer Collins papers

The collection contains many letters between Rebecca and Isaac Collins during his extended business trip to London in 1845. Rebecca passes along news from friends and family, and from the Philadelphia Quakers. Isaac writes about the English Quakers, news from friends, and describes the gifts he is sending to Rebecca and the children. There are also many letters to Rebecca from Mary Anna Longstreth, during Rebecca’s visit to English and Irish Meetings in 1842-1843. There are also letters of John Pease to Rebecca and Isaac Collins. Rebecca’s diaries in the form of booklets and individual pages are dated 1824-1847. Entries are not in order; some are on stray pages rather than in books, and some of the entries in books have been copied from stray “scraps.” Most entries concern Rebecca’s religious feelings and her often-repeated desire to dedicate herself more and more fully to her faith. Some later entries describe her charitable visits to prisoners, the poor, the sick, and the patients of an "insane asylum". One diary is dedicated to the illness and death of Rebecca’s brother Henry, including accounts of the remedies offered by doctors, and of Henry’s mental and spiritual condition.

A small collection of Quaker documents related to the family includes an original printed birth certificate for Rebecca’s youngest daughter Mary Forster Collins, and alsoan original marriage certificate for James Walton and Achsah Croasdale, grandparents of Mary Forster Collins’ husband James Morris Walton. Among the printed material is some paper currency. “United Colonies” bills from 1776 may have been saved because Isaac Collins, Sr. worked as a printer at that time, although these bills are not printed by his establishment in Burlington. There is also a United States bill for ten cents, dated 1874. Finally, there are genealogical notes on the Collins, Singer, and Walton families. These seem to be written at different times by different people. Most are handwritten notes, but there is also a printed page containing a biography of James Morris Walton.