Collins Family Papers
Scope and Contents
The collection contains correspondence, journals of Francis W. Collins, including descriptions of his student days at Friends Boarding School in Providence; family business and financial papers; miscellaneous papers, photographs, and genealogical material on the Collins and Burdick families.
Dates
- Creation: 1797-1937
Creator
- Collins family (Family)
- Providence Friends Boarding School (Providence, R.I.) (Contributor, Organization)
- Moses Brown School (Contributor, Organization)
- Collins, Francis W., 1845-1887 (Contributor, Person)
- Collins, Abel, 1770-1834 (Contributor, Person)
Conditions Governing Access
Collection is open for research.
Conditions Governing Use
Some of the items in this collection may be protected by copyright. The user is solely responsible for making a final determination of copyright status. If copyright protection applies, permission must be obtained from the copyright holder or their heirs/assigns to reuse, publish, or reproduce relevant items beyond the bounds of Fair Use or other exemptions to the law. See http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/UND/1.0/.
Biographical / Historical
Abel Collins (1770-1834) was born in Hopkinton, Rhode Island, one of the eleven children of Amos and Thankful (Clark) Collins. Other children were John (b. 1781) and Hannah Earle (1786-1819). Abel was a birthright Quaker and a minister recorded by Hopkinton Monthly Meeting. He married Mary A. Wilbur (d. 1858) of Hopkinton in 1790. Between 1794-1809, Abel and Mary Collins had eight children who survived to adulthood: Deborah, Mary W., Phebe, Timothy Clark, Abigail, twins Amos Wilbur and Thankful, and Abel Francis.
Abel Francis Collins (b. 1809) lived on the Collins farmstead, which he named Prospect Vale, in North Stonington, Connecticut. In 1844 he married Electa Jane Collins (1818-1896), the daughter of Job Scott and Ruth Hall Collins of Utica, New York. Electa Collins had two brother, both medical doctors, Chalkley Collins, who died in his twenties, and Clarkson Thomas Collins (1821-1881). Clarkson T. Collins married Lydia Coffin in 1844 and established a medical practice in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where he founded the Invalid's Hotel for the treatment of chronic diseased.
Abel F. and Electa J. Collins had three sons, Francis Wendell (1845-1887), Clarkson Abel (b. 1853), and Abel Chalkley (b. 1857). All three sons attends Friends Boarding School in Providence, Rhode Island, and continued their studies at Brown University. Chalkley Collins practiced as an attorney in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Clarkson was a lawyer in New York City. Francis W. Collins moved to Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island, where he taught elementary school. In 1877 he married Alice V. Burdick. They moved to Woodland, California, where Francis operated a nursery business, "Ornamental Trees." They had one son, Francis Winfield Collins.
Extent
4 linear ft. (8 boxes)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
The Collins family was a Quaker family of New England and New York City. Abel Collins (1770-1834) was a birthright Quaker and a minister recorded by Hopkinton Monthly Meeting. He married Mary A. Wilbur (d. 1858) of Hopkinton in 1790, and they had eight children. One of their sons, Abel Francis Collins, was clerk of South Kingston Monthly Meeting. He had three sons who attended Friends Boarding School in Providence, Rhode Island, and continued their studies at Brown University. The collection contains extensive family correspondence (1812-1903) which covers a variety of topics, including schools and education, Quaker concerns, topical events of the day, and family life; journals of Francis W. Collins, including descriptions of his student days at Friends Boarding School in Providence; family business and financial papers; miscellaneous papers, photographs, and genealogical material on the Collins and Burdick families.
Arrangement
The collection is divided into five series:
- Biographical and genealogical
- Correspondence
- Journals
- Business and Financial
- Miscellaneous
Physical Location
For current information on the location of materials, please consult the Library's online catalog
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Purchase, Tolles Fund, 1993; Accession number: 1993.056.
Apparently the collection was preserved by Francis Winfield Collins; he compiled much of the genealogical information and identified individuals in the family album in 1954, according to a pencil notation.
Gift of William Cox, Acc. 2017.021. Per donor's suggestions, four letters written in 1876 by Clarkson Collins to family and one undated letter written by Rebecca Coffin to Electa Collins were added to Series 2.
Separated Materials
The following materials have been removed from the collection:
- 2 volumes of genealogy transferred to book stacks; genealogical charts photocopied from the back of these volumes and included in folder 1: Noyes Genealogy, descendants of Rev. James Noyes, Vol. I and II, collected by Henry E. and Harriet E. Noyes (Boston, Mass, 1904.)
Processing Information
Received unprocessed, sorted into general topics.
Subject
- Collins family (Family)
- Burdick family (Family)
- Title
- Collins Family Papers, 1797-1937
- Author
- FHL staff
- Date
- 1994
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Language of description note
- English
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