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James Franklin Collins (1863-1940)
Papers

James Franklin Collins was born in North Anson, Maine, on December 29, 1863, and spent the latter part of his youth in Providence, Rhode Island. After high school, he worked as a silversmith, designer and embosser at the Gorham Manufacturing Company, from 1879-1899. During this time, he developed an interest in identifying the plants that he found on "his rambles over the State" (Snell 94). He sought the assistance of W. Whitman Bailey, who was then head of the Department of Botany at Brown University. Collins began studying botany with Bailey, and in 1894 he was appointed Curator of the Olney Herbarium at Brown. In 1898 he was awarded an honorary Ph.B. For several more years he would divide his talents between silverwork and botany. Collins switched to botany as a full-time career when he began teaching at Brown in 1899. After W. W. Bailey's retirement in 1906, Collins became head of the botany department, a position he held from 1906-1911.

Beginning in 1907, Collins became involved with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of Forest Pathology. He held several positions within that organization until 1913, when he became head of Brown University's newly established branch laboratory of the Office of Forest Pathology. His interests as a pathologist included tree surgery and chestnut blight. Collins's work for the USDA was focused on diseases and injuries to shade and ornamental trees and shrubs. He became known as the "father of tree surgery" for the improvements that he made in the treatments applied to ornamental trees. His prescribed mixtures for filling the cavities in wounded trees were patented by the USDA (Snell 95). During this time he remained interested in taxonomy, and continued to serve as Curator of the Olney Herbarium until his retirement in 1933.

Collins served as an Associate Editor for Rhodora from 1929-1936 and was an active member of many scientific and botanical societies including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Forestry Association, the New England Botanical Club and Sigma Xi. Collins was involved in a number of collecting trips with M. L. Fernald, particularly in the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec. A mountain on that peninsula was named Mount Collins in his honor. According to Fernald, Collins concentrated on collecting bryophytes and hoped to devote more time to the study of mosses after his retirement; he was prevented from doing so by ill-health. Collins kept detailed diaries of the field trips and also took many photographs. Collins died on November 14, 1940, in Cranston, Rhode Island.

References:

Snell, Walter H. and Alma M. Waterman. "James Franklin Collins." Phytopathology. 31(6): 475-477.
Snell, Walter H. "J. Franklin Collins." Rhodora. 44(520): 93-97.
Fernald, Merritt Lyndon. "Incidents of Field-Work with J. Franklin Collins." Rhodora. 44(520): 98-147.

The Collins papers consist of three main parts: letters to Collins; photographs, negatives and lantern slides made by Collins; and smaller items, mostly pertaining to his field trips.

The letters occupy a little more than one drawer of a filing cabinet, are from about 240 correspondents, and date from 1884-1925, with most letters earlier than 1920. By and large they could be described as general botanical correspondence. The major correspondents (those who wrote 30 or more letters) are: Elizabeth Gertrude Britton (about 55 letters, 1893-1912); Edward Blanchard Chamberlain (over 600 letters, 1897-1925); Frank Shipley Collins (about 35 letters, 1897-1918); Walter Deane (about 130 letters, 1894-1918); Elizabeth Maria Dunham (about 35 letters, 1911-1919); Alexander William Evans (about 35 letters, 1897-1919); William Gilson Farlow (about 85 letters, 1901-1917); Merritt Lyndon Fernald (about 240 letters, 1892-1918); Abel Joel Grout (about 50 letters, 1898-1919); John Michael Holzinger (about 50 letters, 1892-1917); George Golding Kennedy (about 120 letters, 1897-1916); John Macoun (about 30 letters, 1892-1910); George Elwood Nichols (about 30 letters, 1905-1915); Edward Lothrop Rand (about 30 letters, 1896-1914); Annie Morrill Smith (about 50 letter, 1898-1912); Mary Louise Stevens (about 80 letter, 1896-1906); and E.C. Thornton (about 35 letters, 1892-1901). There are often drafts or carbons of replies sent by J.F. Collins (not included in letter-counts above). The letters are in folders arranged alphabetically by name or correspondent, which appears to be the general system followed by Collins, except that all subsections have been integrated into one alphabet. (The Collins letters had been stored in two separate locations in the archives).

The photographic materials consist of four boxes of mounted, numbered and often captioned snapshots; 7 wooden boxes and 19 packets of numbers and labeled negatives; 16 wooden boxes and 2 smaller containers of lantern slides; and 4 small boxes of negatives for lantern slides. The snapshots number from 1 to 971 and from 1.1 to 582-12 (the latter series is about three times the size of the former).

The subjects of the photos include:

1. landscapes and cityscapes -- many shots of Providence and other parts of Rhode Island and small towns and countryside in Maine and Canada; shots from trips to the south and from two long trips to the southwest and west, 1918 and 1929
2. field expeditions and excursions -- expeditions to the Gaspé, especially the 1906 trip; outings of botany clubs in Maine and Rhode Island.
3. landscape panoramas composed of snapshots pasted together, especially from field expeditions
4. family and friends and their homes
5. pets and other animals, wild and domesticated
6. closeups of individual plants, outside and indoors, including some lab experiments in seedling growth
7. trees -- outdoors or herbarium specimens
8. trunks of trees, tree wounds and repairs
9. diagrams of plants and trees and other printed material

The photos date from about 1900 - 1935, although there are a few photos of earlier family daguerreotypes. The negatives and lantern slides seem mostly to correspond to the mounted photographs. Some of the city and town pictures could be quite useful to students of local history. The photos are mostly quite good quality.

The smaller items include:

1. a small notebook containing notes on geography and plants from the 1906 trip to the Gaspé
2. letters, reports, and collection labels related to the 1923 trip to the Gaspé
3. a plaster model of Mt. Logan (in the Gaspé), presumably made by Collins
4. a notebook containing notes on Salix; unlabeled, but appears to have belonged to Collins

The library has copies of Collins' diaries of 1896, 1904, 1905 and 1906 field trips -- Vac C69. The Semi-Historic letters file contains seven folders (about 370 letters) from Collins to Gray Herbarium staff. There is also one list of identifications of some Collins plants in Plant list book 6.

No documentation has been found on the source of the letters. It is likely that they were given to the Gray Herbarium by Collins before his death since they do not include any correspondence for the latter part of his life, 1925-1940. Collins willed his photo negatives, prints and lantern slides pertaining to field trips or botanical matters to M.L. Fernald, who presumably left them at the Gray Herbarium. Collins left his diaries (starting 1883), his books, pamphlets and papers to his sister, Edith W. Jenckes, to dispose of as she saw fit. (He had already given most of his books to the Gray Herbarium before he died). Fernald selected pamphlets, books and photos from the articles left to Mrs. Jenckes on Oct. 6, 1941; a detailed list of his selections has not been found. He apparently obtained some of Collins' diaries (he referred to them in his article about Collins in Rhodora), but what happened to them is a mystery. Collins gave the model of Mt. Logan in March, 1928; it is not clear whether the other small items were acquired before or after Collins' death.

Container Listing:

See Also:

Historic Letter Collection
Semi-Historic Letter Collection
Gray Archives Photograph Collection: #0079-#0082, #0975