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Mercy Hutchinson Jones Collins (1822-1898) was born in Maine. She was ninth of
ten children.
Her father was the Reverend Samuel Hutchinson (1780-1828),
who with the Reverend John Buzzell helped begin the Universalist
Church (currently known as the Unitarian Universalist Church).
He wrote three books about his religious beliefs (including An Apology for Believing in Universal Reconciliation,
available online). There is also a book by John Tripp, pastor of the Baptist Church
in Hebron, Maine, taking issue with his expressed
beliefs (Strictures on Mr. SamuelHutchinson’s Apology for Believing in Universal Reconciliation, also available
online).
Her mother, Mercy Randall (1781-1828), is in the seventh
generation from Mayflower ancestors, Myles Standish and his wife Barbara; also
from John Alden and Priscilla Mullins along with her parents, William and Alice
Mullins.
Mercy’s parents died in the same year, 1828, leaving a
family of young children. All of them were made wards of their father’s
brother, Henry Hutchinson.
When 22 years old, Mercy married Dexter B. Jones in 1844 in Durham, Maine.
He was a ship’s captain. In 1847, they acquired a tract north of Beaumont, Texas.
They had four children, Emma Isabelle, Dexter Riley, Henry Augustus, and
Albert. Her husband Dexter died as a result of an accident aboard a ship in
about 1855, leaving Mercy alone with the four children.
Aaron Collins, Jr. was born in 1811 to Aaron and Lucy
Harrington Collins in Massachusetts.
He left the area in 1832 and went to Brooklyn,
New York with his wife Eunice.
They had three children before Eunice died. He left those children in the care
of a cousin of his wife. He became an engineer aboard ships at the time when
steam was being used more frequently. He had yellow fever when at a Caribbean Island and was nursed back to health by
a native, becoming immune to the disease, and therefore being able to care for
others who had it.
Aaron survived and met Mercy. Aaron and Mercy married in
1859 in Galveston.
In 1860, James Aaron Collins (Jim) was born to them.
In about 1862, when Mercy’s son Albert was about 10, he and
a black boy were crossing the creek on a log. Albert was carrying a cap and
ball pistol he had surreptitiously taken from the house. It slipped out of his
hand and fell into the water. He retrieved it and held it against his abdomen
to see if the ball got wet. When he lifted the hammer, it slipped, causing the
gun to fire, fatally wounding him.
Their granddaughter Jennie Marie remembered hearing that
Aaron and Mercy always let Confederate soldiers come to their house and made
them welcome. However, when the captain of the Yankee gunboat, Harriet Lane,
reversed the engines to disable it just before he was captured and the Southern
officials asked Aaron to help them get it started, he declined, explaining that
his sympathy was with the North. It was felt that reprisals were not taken
against him since he was an older man, had endeared himself to the people in
the community, and had been hospitable to the soldiers.
In about 1865, Aaron was cleaning a muzzle-loading rifle.
All wondered that he did not fill the barrel with water as he knew how to do. It
fired, causing powder burns on his hands. He knew the development of septicemia
(blood poisoning) was highly likely and tried to treat the injuries to avoid
it, which proved futile. No doctors were available as all were pressed into
service because of the Civil War.
Mercy said in later years that she could cope with the
accidental deaths of her husbands, but it was impossible to do that in the loss
of her son Albert. It was because of the accidental deaths of her family
members that her granddaughter Jennie Marie always thought of Mercy as being
the classic Mater Dolorosa (Sad Mother).
Jennie Marie was born in 1893, daughter of Jim Collins and
Minnie Beulah Wallis. Mercy moved with them to Rockport and then to Beeville in
about 1894. It was in Beeville that Mercy wrote the poetry that appeared in the
Beeville Picayune newspaper.
Personal Memories of
Jennie Marie Collins Williams
(wife of Waymon Putnam Williams Sr.; mother of Virginia
Ruth, Waymon Putnam Jr., Marguerite, and Bernice), as recounted by her daughter
Marguerite
Jim wrote a beautiful hand and could add long columns of
numbers very quickly. He was frequently asked to copy or write letters and
legal documents for other persons. I remember that he said coppers for pennies,
gallery for porch, and pronounced dole instead of doll and spun for spoon—no
doubt the way his New England parents spoke.
Mercy corrected her children if they phrased
ungrammatically. She had nearly no schooling but was always busy learning
something. She would help her cousin with his chores if he would let her use
his book. She spent money she probably could ill afford to buy good books for
her children to read—Shakespeare, Cooper, and Pathfinder. Jim liked to read. He
and Henry especially liked Shakespeare. Jennie recited long passages of
Shakespeare and of other writers all her life.
Mercy was drummed out of the Baptist
Church in Johnson
City as she went to the Methodist
Church because they had
open communion.
She said all Hutchinsons
were great speechifiers.
Mercy was always a frail little person who became so stoop
shouldered, they worried about her fitting in a casket. She was buried in the
town cemetery. It was a source of concern and sadness for Jim that her grave
had no marker. It was a long distance to see about it and it was expensive. Her
boys worshiped her.
From her obituary: “She was a lady of high culture and
considerable literary ability, many of her occasional contributions to the
press being rare gems of verse and thought.”
A New Year’s
Introspection
For the Picayune --
One more short year has rolled way; one more
Bearing with it the
records of my life.
All that I am, or may have been before;
In shade and
sunshine, as in peace and strife.
The new year’s greetings echo in my ears;
They’re hailed by
youth & childhood with delight
But ‘tis the knell of my departed years,
And calls me to
review my past tonight.
O, misspent days and hours, forever flown!
Fain, Fain, would I
those heedless hours recall!
How short the passage to the vast unknown!
Life’s dream soon
will end, the curtain fall!
O, blest redeemer, leave me not alone!
but lead me to the
“Rock that is higher than I;”
There shall I find the peace I once have known,
When storms of
doubt and fear were sweeping by.
by Mercy Hutchinson
Jones Collins
Beeville Weekly Picayune, Beeville, Texas
January 2, 1896
Life’s Mirror
There are loyal hearts, there are spirits brave,
There are souls
that are pure and true!
Then give to the world the best you have,
And the best will
come back to you.
Give love, and love to our life will flow,
A strength in your
utmost need.
Have faith and a score of hearts will show
Their faith in your
word and deed.
Give truth, and your gifts will be paid in kind
And honor will
honor meet.
And a smile that is sweet will surely find
A smile that is
just as sweet!
Give pity and sorrow to those who mourn;
You will gather in
flowers again.
The scattered seeds from your thought outborne
Though the sowing
seemed but vain.
For life is the sorrow of king and slave;
‘Tis just what we
are, and do.
Then give to the world the best you have,
And the best will
come back to you.
by Mercy Hutchinson
Jones Collins
Beeville Weekly Picayune, Beeville, Texas
April 10, 1896
Life is Like a Wave
on the Ocean
Life is like a wave on the ocean
Flowing onward to
the shore,
Turbid, calm, changing ever,
Sweeping on forever
more.
We are like the ocean wavelet,
Swirling onward
with the tide;
Some are parted in mid ocean,
Others floating
side by side.
by Mercy Hutchinson
Jones Collins
Beeville Weekly Picayune, Beeville, Texas
February 27, 1896
Little Jim and I
At night we love to
wander
By the streamlet flowing by.
The cabin is so
lonely
With only little Jim and I.
by Mercy Hutchinson
Jones Collins
Clear Creek, Galveston,
Texas ca. 1865
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