Collingwood, Joseph W., 1822-1862.

Joseph W. Collingwood was a Union officer. Before the Civil War, he owned a fish market and a sailboat, and was member of the Plymouth Standish Guards and Massachusetts Militia. In 1848, he married Rebecca W. Richardson, a teacher at the Boston Female Asylum. In August 1861, Collingwood was commissioned Captain of the Company H of the 18th Massachusetts Infantry. Until October 1861, his regiment was attached to Fort Corcoran, defenses of Washington, and then to the Army of the Potomac. The regiment remained in camp at Hall's Hill, Va., until March 1862, and then took part in the Peninsular Campaign, 2nd Battle of Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg Campaign. In Oct. 1862, Collingwood was detailed by Gen. Porter as Provost Marshall to Keedysville, Md. He then joined the regiment in its movement to Falmouth and Fredericksburg, Va. Collingwood was mortally wounded in the battle of Fredericksburg, and died of wounds on Dec. 24, 1862. He was buried in Plymouth, Mass. His brothers John B. and Thomas, 1st Lieutenant and private of the 29th Massachusetts Infantry regiment, died in 1863.

Collingwood's daughter, Eleanor accompanied Benjamin Apthrop Gould (1824-1896) and his family during his work at the national observatory in Cordoba, Argentina in 1870-1874. In 1878 she was a teacher at Hampton Institute founded by Samuel Chapman Armstrong. Collingwood's son Charles Barnard Collingwood (1860-1937) married Harriet Thomas; he was a circuit judge in East Lansing, Michigan. His other son Herbert Winslow became a prominent agricultural journalist and editor of the Rural New Yorker.

Biographical Note

Joseph W. Collingwood, second son of William and Eleanor Harlow Collingwood, was born in 1822 in Nantucket, Mass. Shortly afterwards the family moved to Plymouth. In 1840-1850's, Joseph W. Collingwood owned a fish market and occasionally went out with a fishing fleet to New Foundland. In Sept. 1848, he became engaged to Rebecca W. Richardson, a teacher of the Boston Female Asylum. A short marriage notice in The England Washingtonian, the organ of Sons of Temperance, reported that the couple was married at the Female Orphan Asylum, Boston, Oct. 12, by the Rev. F.D. Huntington.

Both Joseph and Rebecca were active in charitable works and temperance and abolitionist movement. Their son Herbert Winslow recalled that I had for my chief playmates... two colored boys - the children of a fugitive slave, who had been captured in Plymouth just as he was to step aboard a fishing boat, bound for Canada. Rather than let him go back to Slavery the town people raised a fund and bought him from his southern owner. They then set him free. He sent back South for his wife, who was a slave, and they lived in Plymouth, held as an object lesson during the Lincoln campaign. Joseph W. Collingwood was also an active member of the Standish Guards, Plymouth Home Guards established to for the purpose of quelling riots, tumults and invasions and not to be sent out of state. According to Collingwood, the Guards had been established primarily for fear of Nativist riots similar to one four years ago in Filadelfia (sic!). Later he was an officer of the 3 rd Regiment of Light Infantry of Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, company B.

On Aug. 21, 1861, Joseph W. Collingwood was commissioned Lieut. of the Company H of the 18 th Infantry regiment of Massachusetts. His regiment was first attached to Fort Corcoran, the defenses of Washington, and then to the Army of the Potomac. Until March, 1862, the regiment remained in camp at Hall's Hill, Va., and then took part in the Peninsular Campaign, 2 nd Battle of Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg campaigns. After Antietam, Collingwood was detailed as Provost Marshall to Keedysville, Md. He then joined the regiment in its movement to Falmouth and Fredericksburg, Va. Collingwood was mortally wounded in the Battle of Fredericksburg, and died of wounds on Dec. 24, 1862. He was buried in Plymouth, next to his brothers, John B. and Thomas, who served in the 29 th Infantry Regiment and also perished in the Civil War.

Collingwood, Herbert Winslow, My Autobiography, Bulletin 6 Department of Agricultural Journalism. College of Agriculture. University of Wisconsin Madison (1935).

Joseph Collingwood's daughter, Eleanor Wyman Collingwood accompanied Benjamin Apthrop Gould (1824-1896) and his family during his work at the national observatory in Cordoba, Argentina in 1870-1874. In 1878 she was a teacher at Hampton Institute founded by Samuel Chapman Armstrong. His son Charles Barnard Collingwood (1860-1937) married Harriet Thomas; he was a circuit judge in East Lansing, Michigan. His other son Herbert Winslow became a prominent agricultural journalist and the editor of the Rural New Yorker .