Edward Knight Collins I (5 August 1802 – 22 January 1878) was an American shipping magnate.
Early life
He was born on August 5, 1802 in
Truro, Massachusetts
Truro is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, comprising two villages: Truro and North Truro. Located slightly more than 100 miles (160 km) by road from Boston, it is a summer vacation community just south of the no ...
to
Israel Gross Collins (1776–1831) and Mary Ann Knight (c.1780-Jan 3, 1803). His mother was a niece of
Sir Edward Knight and she died shortly after Edward was born. His aunts then raised him. His father moved to New York City. At age thirteen in 1815, Collins left Truro for
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
to attend school. He then went to New York City as an
apprentice
Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain a ...
clerk in the
counting house
A counting house, or counting room, was traditionally an office in which the financial books of a business were kept. It was also the place that the business received appointments and correspondence relating to demands for payment.
As the use of ...
of
McCrea and Slidell. Within a few years, Edward moved to
Delaplaine and Company.
[
]
Shipping career
In 1821 he joined his father's company and in January 1824 he became a partner in I. G. Collins & Son. In 1827 they started the first regularly scheduled packet service between New York City and Veracruz, Mexico
Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...
. In 1826, Collins married Mary Ann Woodruff, the daughter of Thomas T. Woodruff. They had a son, Edward K. Collins II, as well as a daughter and at least one other child.[
After his father's death in 1831 he became involved with the cotton trade between and New York. He bought his first shipping line in 1831. In 1836, he launched the Dramatic Line of sailing packets, which quickly became a major presence on what was then the world's most important shipping route, between New York and Liverpool.] He received a government subsidy in 1847 to carry mail on that same route, for which purpose he formed the New York and Liverpool United States Mail Steamship Company (the "Collins Line") to compete with Britain's Cunard Line. The new Line's inaugural voyage took place in April 1850, and for the next six years its steamships were the biggest, fastest and most luxurious on the Atlantic. They were hugely expensive to operate, however, and in 1852 Collins was forced to go back to Congress to secure a major increase in his subsidy for carrying mail. This left him in a very vulnerable position when the increase was canceled in 1856 after two of the Line's four steamships sank: the ''Arctic'' had sunk in 1854 while carrying his wife and two of his children., and less than two years later the ''Pacific'' disappeared without a trace on her way back from Liverpool to New York. The Collins Line struggled on for another couple of years, using the insurance payouts for its two lost ships to build an even bigger steamer called the ''Adriatic''. But after its subsidy was reduced it simply could not make ends meet, and in February 1858 the Line finally folded.
Later life
Collins moved to his summer home, "Collinwood" in Wellsville, Ohio
Wellsville is a village in southern Columbiana County, Ohio, United States, along the Ohio River. Its population was 3,113 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Salem micropolitan area, north of Steubenville and south of Youngstown. In its he ...
, where he engaged in coal mining and oil drilling
An oil well is a drillhole boring in Earth that is designed to bring petroleum oil hydrocarbons to the surface. Usually some natural gas is released as associated petroleum gas along with the oil. A well that is designed to produce only gas may ...
. He remarried, to Sarah Browne, and by 1862 he had moved back to New York City, where he died on January 22, 1878. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx
Woodlawn Cemetery is one of the largest cemeteries in New York City and a designated National Historic Landmark. Located south of Woodlawn Heights, Bronx, New York City, it has the character of a rural cemetery. Woodlawn Cemetery opened during t ...
.
References
Further reading
* Folsom, Burton W. ''The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America'' (2010) ch 1
excerpt
* "Shipping subsidies" in ''New International Encyclopædia'' (1921) v21 p 31
{{DEFAULTSORT:Collins, Edward Knight
American businesspeople in shipping
1802 births
1878 deaths
Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York)
People from Truro, Massachusetts
People from Wellsville, Ohio
19th-century American businesspeople
Businesspeople from Massachusetts
Businesspeople from Ohio