Person:Erastus Collins (2)

He came to Hartford with his father's family in 1819, and for years was associated with his father in his business. He was a prominent and trusted man in Hartford interests. He was a director of the Aetna Insurance Company, and as chairman of its building committee he superintended the construction of the present fine brown-stone structure of that company on Main Street, north of the Aetna Life building. He was also director and vice-president of the Hartford Hospital; a director of the American School at Hartford for the Deaf; an active and valuable school visitor; one of the projectors of the Hartford & Wethersfield Horse Railway Company; a projector of the noble Cedar Hill Cemetery, and a leader in the Young Men's Institute (now the Hartford Library).

For two winters before his death he was especially active in philanthropic work. Collins was a true Christian; in his own unostentatious way he lived the life he professed. His religious profession, made in his early youth, was in the old North Congregational Church (now, in another locality, the Park Church), in 1830 -- about the time Dr. Spring was succeeded by Dr. Bushnell, we think, and having united with that Church he remained in it until the organization, in 1852, of the Pearl Street Church. He became interested therein, and was one of the founders. He became, when the Asylum Hill Church was founded, not merely a member, but one of its leading supporters, contributing at one time largely toward the extinguishment of the debt. It is to such men as he, and Roland Mather, that the Church has been indebted for so much of its prosperity. Collins built up an admirable character in Hartford. It was a life work, but it is one which wins appreciation, when fellow citizens can view such character through a long perspective of philanthropic enterprises and abounding good deeds.

Collins was first a clerk, and later associated with his father in the business of the great house which afterward became his own. That house took, among other accounts, that of the well-known Sprague prints. Later, on the failure of the A & W. Sprague Co., Collins & Fenn, by a special arrangement, took all the product of the Sprague mills. This arrangement proved a safe and profitable one for the Hartford house, and giving as it did the entire Sprague account to the Hartford house of Collins & Fenn, largely increased the business of the commission house. Collins was a cautious man, in business as in everything else. He went into no business transaction without fully considering it from all points of view. He owned real-estate in Hartford, on the south side of Asylum Avenue, Atwood and Collins streets. He was also a large owner of gas stock and Horse-Railway shares, and other local securities. Toward the close of 1876 Collins retired from the active business of the house, with which he was a long connected, and afterward devoted his time largely to philanthropic enterprises.

References

• Collens, Clarence Lyman. Collins Memorial (Hartford, CT 1959)

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Collens, Clarence Lyman. Collins Memorial. (Hartford, CT: (self published), 1959)
   p. 168.
2. ↑ Cedar Hill Cemetery.