Collins Family Papers

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 brothers, 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 a hotel for the treatment of the chronically ill.

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.

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.

The collection is divided into five series:

1. Biographical and genealogical
2. Correspondence
3. Journals
4. Business and Financial
5. Miscellaneous

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.

Received unprocessed, sorted into general topics.

The following materials have been removed from the collection:

1. 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.)

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Preferred Citation

[Indicate the cited item or series here], RG5/173, Collins Family Papers, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College

Publisher

Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College

Finding aids author

FHL staff

Date

1994

Creator

Collins family

Providence Friends Boarding School (Providence, R.I.)

Moses Brown School

Collins, Francis W., 1845-1887

Collins, Abel, 1770-1834

Subject

Quakers -- Rhode Island

Quakers -- Connecticut

Quakers -- New York (State)

Quakers -- California

Quakers -- Social life and customs

Quakers -- 19th century -- Diaries

People

Collins family

Burdick family

Language

English

Form

Diaries