Author: Collins, Francis
Biography:
COLLINS, Francis (d 1841: ancestry.co.uk)
The ODNB, West County Poets, and Bibliotheca Cornubiensis give his year of death as 1839 but it seems more likely he was the Francis Collins who died in Plymouth in 1841. His year of birth is uncertain; a Francis Collins was baptised at St. Andrew’s, Plymouth, in 1773 and that may have been him. However, the record for the birth and baptism of his son James Edward Mortimer Collins in the Ebenezer Chapel, Kingsbridge, Devon, identifies Francis Collins as being “of London.” He was a solicitor but seems not to have attended university. He married Elizabeth (not Maud) Branscombe (1799-1877) in Kingsbridge on 29 Aug. 1826. Their son, an only child, was born in Plymouth on 29 June 1827 and baptised in the Ebenezer Chapel on 13 Nov. 1834. Spiritual Poems was his only published work. His son, known as Mortimer Collins, was a novelist and journalist. (ODNB [for James Edward Mortimer Collins] 12 Mar. 2024; ancestry.co.uk 12 Mar. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 12 Mar. 2024; Bibliotheca Cornubiensis; West Country Poets; M. Collins, Mortimer Collins: His Letters and Friendships [1877]) SR