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Albion College Archives: Exhibits
Collins at Albion In 1846, Collins set off on horseback to Albion, then a small town on the western Michigan frontier, where he took a teaching position at the Wesleyan Seminary, later known as Albion College. There he taught courses in Latin, Greek, chemistry, botany, and rhetoric, served as Sunday school teacher for the Methodist Church, and conducted research into anatomy and Hebrew. Mission to China Collins became captivated by with China while a student at the University of Michigan, and reportedly read every available book on China from the university's library. Convinced that he had a calling to be a missionary to China, he tirelessly lobbied the Methodist Church's Board of Missions to send him to that country. Although he was initially told that there were no funds for such a mission, Collins persevered. In the spring of 1847, the mission board informed the 24-year-old Collins that he would head the first Methodist mission to China, along with the physician Dr. Rev. Moses C. White. Collins was endowed with youthful zeal, but missionary work in China presented formidable obstacles. This was the first Methodist mission aimed at a non-English speaking population, and the linguistic and cultural barriers were immense. No dictionary of the Fuzhou dialect existed, for example, and the early missionaries also struggled to translate the Bible into Chinese. In the aftermath of the Opium War, anti-foreign feeling ran high in China. Unable to find a landlord that would rent property to them inside the Fuzhou city limits, Collins and White had to settle for a building in a distant suburb. There Collins struggled to learn Chinese from a native tutor, who feared that he would be harassed for associating with a foreigner. According to Collins, his teacher had to pay hush money to local officials who would otherwise have prohibited him from teaching the foreign missionary.
Collins left Fuzhou without having converted a single Chinese. Nevertheless, his relatively short and illness-plagued sojourn in China did lay the groundwork for later teams of Methodists. Like Adoniram Judson, the legendary missionary to Burma after whom he was named, Judson Dwight Collins continues to be remembered as a missionary pioneer. From the 1850s through the 1880s, Albion's quadrangle was graced by a stone monument inscribed with the names of Collins, Principal Charles F. Stockwell, and President Clark T. Hinman. Upon the north side of the square obelisk was inscribed, "In memory of Judson D. Collins, A.M., First Missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church to the Empire of China. Died May 25th, 1852. 'Go ye into the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.' - Christ -" (Fennimore, Keith J. The Albion Sesquicentennial History: 1835-1985. Albion, MI: Albion College, 1985, p.107.) In the 1858 Trustees Report, it was noted that "The monument recently erected to the memory of Dr. Hinman, Professor Stockwell, and Rev. Judson D. Collins, is highly ornamental to the grounds and honorably commemorates the virtues of the dead and the beneficence by whose liberality it was erected."
The memorial column appears in the center of this picture of the college from the 1870s. It was later removed in 1885, apparently for aesthetic reasons, sold to a down-town monument firm. (Pleiad, Vol.XXIII, No.9, February 13, 1908, p.100) In a letter from Alumni Secretary, W.B. Buck in 1934, he states that it was the impression of an alumnus he spoke to that "the shaft was removed because it suggested a cemetery rather than a campus." The tablet with the names of Stockwell, Collins and Hinman was transferred to a wall in South Hall (then the chapel), but where it is today remains a mystery. In his 1852 address to the University of Michigan's Union Missionary Society of Inquiry, the Rev. C.T. Hinman praised Collins' missionary spirit, calling him "a martyr for China and for man." He also exhorted his listeners to follow Collins' example: "Let us imitate our departed brother. The SAVIOR commands us. His Church entreats us. The voices of pagan millions call us. And now that our brother has fallen, who will fill the void in the broken ranks? Who?"
Judson Collins: Before the Mast,
a play by Matthew A. Vance Judson Collins Camp
The church site today. Behind the stone memorial is a sign directing visitors to Collins' nearby gravesite. The gravesite itself has been designated United Methodist Historic Site #62.
The Collins' homestead in Lyndon Township, Michigan, as it looks today:
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Albion College ◦ Albion, Michigan ◦ 517/629-10000
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