Published September 20, 2020
By Phil Reyburn
In 1816, four Collins brothers left Litchfield,
Connecticut, settling across the Mississippi River from St. Louis in Madison
County Illinois. It has been said that the Collins’ were the first New
Englanders to arrive in Illinois. In the fall of 1822, Frederick Collins with
his parents and three sisters joined the rest of the family.
In a short time, in addition to their family farm, the
Collins’ operated saw and grist mill, a tannery, general store, distillery, and
a steamboat on the Mississippi. Frederick, born February 24, 1804, the youngest
of the five brothers, was given the tannery to manage.
The
Collins family was a hardworking business minded prosperous people. Soon a
community developed around the family’s ventures, and it took their surname,
becoming Collinsville, Illinois.
Religion
was essential to the Collins’ daily life, and they helped organize the first
Presbyterian Church in Illinois on May 3, 1823. Their faith formed a firm
foundation of right and wrong, which they lived by.
In
Litchfield they attended the church pastored by Lyman Beecher, co-founder of
the American Temperance Society. Based on Rev. Beecher’s temperance sermons,
the family concluded that distilling whiskey “was inconsistent with the best
interest of society, and abandoned it” at a great financial sacrifice.
Seeing
slavery up close in Missouri, the family could not condone it and viewed it as
immoral. When in 1823 and 1824, there was a vote for a convention to amend the
Illinois constitution and introduce slavery into the Prairie State; the Collins
family took an active part in defeating this effort. For the family, especially
Frederick, there was no greater wrong than slavery.
It is
safe to conclude that the Collins’ relationship with Rev. Lyman Beecher, whose
family was in the vanguard of the anti-slavery movement, had a significant effect
on the Collins’ view of the “peculiar institution.” One of Rev. Beecher’s sons,
Henry Ward, was an outspoken leader in the abolitionist cause. While a
daughter, Harriet Beecher Stowe was the author of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
, which depicted the harsh conditions of slavery. Another
son, Edward, was the first president of Illinois College in Jacksonville. The
Collins families were early benefactors of the college. Frederick would become
a trustee.
In 1829,
Anson, Augustus, Michael, and Frederick moved to Naples on the Illinois River,
where they built a mill and a steamboat. The deaths of Augustus and Anson led
Michael and Frederick to leave Naples and locate in Adams County in 1837.
Frederick went to Columbus and Michael to Liberty.
Platted
in 1835 and located near the center of Adams County, Columbus was seen as a
potential county seat. In the late 1830s, it was a growing and prosperous town.
Frederick Collins moved there and opened a general store for that reason. He also
erected a brick home, which was considered a mansion.
In
addition to his home and business, Frederick was instrumental in organizing Columbus’
Presbyterian Church.
Politically
Frederick Collins was a loyal Whig, but with the advent of the anti-slavery
movement in Illinois, he would take a different course.
Edward
Beecher, with whom the Collins family was tied by their Connecticut roots, held
common cause with abolitionist minister and newspaper publisher, Elijah Lovejoy.
In October 1837, Beecher and Lovejoy united in calling for an anti-slavery
convention in Alton. On November 7, 1837, twelve days after the gathering,
Lovejoy was murdered by a pro-slavery mob, making him a martyr of the
abolitionist cause.
Lovejoy’s
death was a watershed moment for the anti-slavery movement. Nationally the
abolitionist cause was led by William Lloyd Garrison who headed the American
Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison counted on petitions and time to bring about a
moral change of heart—not politics to end slavery. Others felt it was time to
take the political approach, and in April 1840 these abolitionists formed the
Liberty Party, selecting James G. Birney as their candidate for president in
upcoming national election. Birney received 6,225 votes nationwide. Illinois
gave him 157 votes with Adams County providing 42.
Not
deterred by Birney’s small vote total. The Illinois Liberty Party fielded
candidates in the following elections for Congress and state government.
Galesburg
abolitionists took the lead in running a Liberty Party candidate for Congress. In a convention there in June 1841, they
nominated Frederick Collins as the party’s candidate for Illinois’ Third
Congressional District. Collins attracted 492 votes with 114 coming from Adams
County.
A year
later in Illinois’ gubernatorial election, Collins was the Liberty Party’s
lieutenant governor candidate and received 965 votes, garnering 129 votes in
Adams County.
At his
death in 1878, Rev. Smyth of Quincy’s First Presbyterian Church said: “Mr. Collins was a firm, fearless
abolitionist; he spoke and reasoned for the cause . . . when to stand for such principles was neither
profitable nor safe.” He further reminded those gathered that “Mr. Collins was
burned in effigy, the figure of a slave-woman by his side. Those effigies . . .
may [be] remembered among the honors of his life!” In at least one incidence,
it was noted that Frederick Collins “had assisted a runaway female slave on her
way to freedom.”
In a
1915
Daily Whig
article regarding
Collins’ home in Columbus the reporter stated:
“It was also the hiding place for slaves that were being secreted to the
Northland, to be placed in a state of freedom.”
A 1923
Daily Journal
article claimed that the
Collins’ home was “the first station on what is said to be the largest and most
extensive underground railway in Illinois.” The home, the reporter wrote, supposedly
had two secret rooms where fugitive slaves were hidden. The writer explained
that “the slaves would be taken from Quincy to Columbus, where Fred Collins . . . would take them to Camp Point or
Augusta.”
On his
death a remembrance in the
Alton Weekly
Telegraph
stated that Frederick Collins “was an original Abolitionist, and
was not afraid or ashamed to be so called, when in the minds of most, the name
was a term of opprobrium [contempt].”
Frederick
Collins left Columbus and moved to Quincy in 1851 where he eventually became
involved in the manufacture of stoves—-Collins, Comstock & Co.
Sources
Alton Weekly Telegraph
, February 21, 1878.
Collins,
William H.,
The Collins Family
,
Quincy, Illinois, 1897.
Doyle,
Don H.,
The Social Order of a Frontier,
Illinois, 1825-1870
, Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1978.
Kofoid,
Carrie P., “Puritan Influences in Illinois before 1860,”
Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society for the Year 1905
,
Publication No. 10, Springfield, Illinois:
Illinois State Journal Co., State Printers, 1906.
Moore,
Ensley, “The Collins Family and Connections,”
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
, Vol. 12, No.1,
April 1919, Springfield, Illinois:
Illinois State Journal Co., State Printers, 1919.
Muelder,
Hermann R., “Galesburg: Hot-bed of
Abolitionism,”
Journal of the Illinois
State Historical Society
, Vol. 35, No. 3, Sept. 1942, Springfield,
Illinois: The Illinois State Historical Society, 1942.
Murray,
Williamson & Phelps, Chicago, Pub.
The
History of Adams County, Illinois
, 1879.
Pease,
Theodore Calvin, “Illinois Election Returns 1818-1848,”
Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library
,
Vol.
38, Springfield, Illinois: Illinois
State Historical Library, 1923.
Peoples History of Quincy and Adams
County, Illinois
, 1970.
The Quincy Whig
, February 21, 1878 and November 10, 1915.
The Quincy Daily Journal
, September 11, 1895 and February 11, 1923.
Richardson,
Jr., William A., “Dr. David Nelson and his Times,”
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
, Vol. 13, No. 4
January 1921, Springfield, Illinois:
Illinois State Historical Society, 1921.
Smyth,
Rev. Newman,
A Sermon upon The Life and
Character of Frederick Collins
, Quincy, Illinois February 24, 1878, in the
collection of the Historical Society of Quincy & Adams County, Illinois.
Tillson,
Christina Holmes,
A Woman’s Story of
Pioneer Illinois
, Carbondale, Illinois:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1995.
