Where did the Collins family come from?

[Amy Jennings Fan]

Where did the Collins family come from before coming to Maine?

[Ian]

I can only assume England. Back in about...what? 1692? Anyone confirm that? Might be a little before, since Isaac was building Collinsport in 1692.

[Raineypark]

I don't know what, if anything, was said in the show about the ancestral home, but historically, "Collins" is a not-unusual Anglo-Irish name.  

[CyrusL]

I did some rudimentary searches on the Collins name, and it is common in England, Ireland and Wales. I would tend to suspect this family is English as in 1795, Barnabas moving to England is considered a good cover story, in 1897 Quentin implies he has visited family in England, and in 1967, Elizabeth says, "I didn't know we still had family in England."
         The name Collins derives from two sources, in England it was diminutive for Nicholas; in Welsh-Gaelic, it means roughly "darling", but usually in reference to small animals, most especially puppies or small dogs. (Welsh sp. cuilein)
Maybe this explains Barnabas's puppy eyes. 

Michael

PS I did a scan for "Barnabas Collins" and a few real people came up on some geneaology sites, but it was a kind of a ruse to lead me to signing up for "Ancestry.com".  My own family history book lists an old will circa 1690s in which a family member bequeaths some furniture to, (and I kid you not, this is TRUE) to his "cousin Barnabas Joyner in England!"   

[Miss_Winthrop]

I wonder how the Collinses acquired their land? Was it originally given to them by the English monarchy? I know that it's not part of the story but it's interesting to speculate about.  It seems that the Collinses were no longer English loyalists during the Revolutionary War from what I gather from the fact that Joshua Collins builds a secret room in which to store rifles for the American Army during the war. 

[Raineypark]

I wonder how the Collinses acquired their land?

By slaughtering the people who already lived there, and taking their land.  Isn't that how it's usually done?

Which would go a long way towards explaining why the family suffered from curses virtually from their arrival. 

[Bob_the_Bartender]

No, actually the Collins family enlisted the aid of the then-colony's local chief justice to have the land appropriated from the native Americans and transferred to them under the especially creative and progressive legal concept of "eminent domain."

The fact that so many residents of Colinsport have found both financial reward and security as a result of the construction of the Collins Cannery and the Collins fishing fleet marina (as opposed to the land remaining as undeveloped and unprofitable woodlands) over the centuries, is truly a testament to the foresight and wisdom of that brilliant 17th century jurist.

The name of that prescient judge, you may ask?    Why, that great legal scholar was the learned Caleb Souter.  (And, yes, Collinsport's Judge Caleb Souter IS the ancestor of the esteemed, present-day US Supreme Court justice, Daniel Souter!)   

 

[Josette]

Welcome back, Bob!  I haven't "seen" you in ages!! 

[Miss_Winthrop]

The land may or may not have been taken from the Indians. The Collinses were probably granted land by the King before they left England. The King needed some 'good people' to settle the colonies, prosper and pay him royalties. I read somewhere that in the whole of the North American continent there were no more than several million Indians at any given time. It's possible that in that part of Maine were the Collinses lived, there weren't any Indians. Another interesting fact is that while England had a high infant mortality rate during that time, the colonists were thriving and had a much lower rate.  The reason was food and plenty of it.

[onyx_treasure]

     Maine had and has many Native Americans living here.  Abnaki(also Wabanaki), Passamaquoddy, Malecite, Pennacook, and Penobscot tribes are what I found listed.  My son's girlfriend's mother is full blood Penobscot.  The tribes still hold public pow-wows but I have never been to one.  I just catch snippets on the local news.
     Who knows maybe a Collins or two had Indian wives?

[Fletcher]

I remember in the 91 series, there was a lenghty scene in which Barnabas defined the Collins' origins as having been in England and he also described that Collinwood was the famiy's ancestral English estate, moved and reassembled, brick-by-brick, in Maine.  I wasn't crazy about this bit of detail -- I really just couldn't believe it.  But, does that "speach" from the 91 series have any counterpart from the original series?   Or did the 91 writers just make it up??

[Midnite]

I remember in the 91 series, there was a lenghty scene in which Barnabas defined the Collins' origins as having been in England and he also described that Collinwood was the famiy's ancestral English estate, moved and reassembled, brick-by-brick, in Maine.  I wasn't crazy about this bit of detail -- I really just couldn't believe it.  But, does that "speach" from the 91 series have any counterpart from the original series?   Or did the 91 writers just make it up??

Fletcher, there's a corresponding scene in the original series in which Barnabas describes Collinwood's origins.  The house wasn't moved from England, however, but its materials were said to have come from several European countries-- bricks from Holland, Italian flooring, handpainted wallpaper from Belgium, Spanish moldings, etc.  It's a lovely, bittersweet scene, even if other aspects of the house's history presented in Barnabas' speech were eventually changed.

[Misa]

In some of the episodes David talkes about family ancestors' history. I think Elizabeth does too,  wasn't Isaac Collins supposed to be the first Collins in the New World? Early in the show Jeremiah was supposed to have built the main house, I believe.

I always got the idea that the Collins family was supposed to have had money in England before they came to the colonies.

I too didn't like the story in 1991 that Collinwood was the family home from England taken apart piece by piece and rebuilt. That doesn't seem possible or likely in 1790, maybe in 1890. And there doesn't seem to be any reason for it either. I mean the Old House on the estate seemed perfectly fitted for the family. If they wanted a grander house building a new one I can understand, but bringing one over from England was way over the top.

In the 1795 storyline the family building a fine new home seemed like something they would have done. After all Barnabas and Josette were getting married. Familys often built new houses for their children as a wedding gift, So iit seemed that they were going to give the Old House to Barn and Jo instead of the new house. Does seem like it would be less work to have the newlyweds move instead of the whole family though.

I know that it was never mentioned that Barn and Jo were going to be given the Old House, but it does make sense. And Naomi ends up giving it to Barn and Angie, unfortunately, if they had moved away think of all the lives that would have been spared.

Misa

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I too didn't like the story in 1991 that Collinwood was the family home from England taken apart piece by piece and rebuilt. That doesn't seem possible or likely in 1790, maybe in 1890. And there doesn't seem to be any reason for it either. I mean the Old House on the estate seemed perfectly fitted for the family. If they wanted a grander house building a new one I can understand, but bringing one over from England was way over the top.

Actually, it may not have been common practice to transport an entire house from England, but purchasing fireplaces, windows or even entire rooms in the already existing stately homes of Europe and transporting them piece by piece to America to incorporate them into new homes was something that did indeed happen in the 18th century. And while it may not have been commonplace to transport an entire house and reconstruct it, it did happen because there's a house very near to where I live where that is indeed the case. Now, the house in nowhere near the magnitude of Collinwood on the '91 series - but I don't believe that it's that big of a stretch of the imagination to believe that a family with the wealth and prestige that the Collinses supposedly wielded might have moved their ancestral home to America. And actually, I really liked the idea that they had because, as I've posted before, I think it opened the '91 series up to all sorts of possible backstories that might have reached back beyond even the 17th century. 

[Miss_Winthrop]

Perhaps the first Collins (I think it was Isaiah?)that came over was probably the son of landed gentry. I think that the Collinses had some wealth when they arrived and didn't just start out from the ground up. The Collinses were a very important family in 1692 during the trial of Judah Zachary. I think it was Amadeus Collins who found Zachary guilty of witchcraft. In England, often times the head of a wealthy country family would sit as a judge in neighborhood disputes.  I'm not sure if that extended to criminal trials or not. I don't remember if there were 3 judges at Zachary's trial or just the one.  For Vicky's trial in 1795, there are 3 judges.