My Genealogy Hound

JOSEPH M. COLLINS was born in Kenton County, Ky., June 29, 1832, and is a son of Richard A. and Harriet (Dictum) Dickerson Collins, natives respectively of Culpeper County, Va., and Kenton County, Ky. Richard A. Collins was a farmer by occupation, and settled in Kenton County when about eighteen years of age; he was an aid de camp of the governor with the rank of captain, his commission being dated about 1830; he had a farm of about 400 acres, and owned twenty slaves; he died in 1861 at the age of seventy years. Joseph M. Collins received his education under the private tutorship of Rev. B. G. Fields, of Grant County, and when eighteen years of age began to teach a school. In 1855 he went to Missouri, and engaged in merchandising. In the summer of 1857, when twenty-four years old, he made an independent race for Congress in the Third District against Gen. John D. Clark, and reduced the Democratic majority over 2,000. In the winter of the latter year he returned to Covington and read law with Judge O’Hara, of Covington, and was admitted to the bar in 1858, when he located in Crittenden, and began the practice of his profession. August 20, 1861, he married Miss Mary J., daughter of Judge A. G. Craig, of Gallatin County, who died in 1879, leaving one child, Albert C., who was born in 1862. April 18, 1883. Mr. Collins married Miss Kate M. Schmidt, daughter of Paul Schmidt, a celebrated music teacher of Covington, deceased. Mr. Collins removed from Crittenden to Covington in 1883, and is now a law partner with Judge W. M. Fenley. He owns 211 acres of land in Kenton County on the Covington and Lexington Turnpike, and has a handsome residence on Madison Avenue. He is a Mason, a Knight Templar, a member of the I. O. O. F., and has always been a public temperance man, being chairman of the State temperance convention in 1876. He is a cousin of the State historian, Hon. Richard H. Collins, assisted in the preparation of the history of Kentucky, and conducted the suit of E. H. Collins, vs. The State of Kentucky, which finally resulted in upholding the contract with the State for the purchase of the history for common school purposes.