Collins, Patrick A. (Patrick Andrew), 1844-1905

COLLINS, Patrick Andrew, a Representative from Massachusetts; born near Fermoy, County Cork, Ireland, March 12, 1844; immigrated to the United States with his parents, who settled in Chelsea, Mass., in 1848; attended the common schools; learned the upholstery trade; member of the State house of representatives in 1868 and 1869; served in the State senate in 1870 and 1871; studied law at the Harvard Law School and in Boston; was admitted to the bar in 1871 and practiced in Boston; judge advocate general of Massachusetts in 1875; delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 1876, 1880, 1888, and 1892; elected as a Democrat to the Forty-eighth, Forty-ninth, and Fiftieth Congresses (March 4, 1883-March 3, 1889); was not a candidate for renomination in 1888; resumed the practice of law; consul general at London from May 6, 1893, to May 17, 1897, under President Cleveland's administration; again engaged in the practice of his profession, served as mayor of Boston 1902-1905; died while on a visit to Hot Springs, Va., on September 14, 1905; interment in Holyhood Cemetery, Brookline, Norfolk County, Mass.

Patrick Andrew Collins. US Congressman, Boston Mayor. A Democratic with the power of the Boston Irish community, he was a force in Massachusetts politics for almost forty years. Born near Fermoy, County Cork, Ireland, he was four years old when his parents immigrated to the United States, and settled near Boston, Massachusetts. He started a successful upholstery trade, and he became in involved in trade unions, and the Fenian Movement, whose goal was to free Ireland of British rule. This led him to enter politics for the first time with his election to the Massachusetts State Legislature in 1868. After terms in that House and the Massachusetts State Senate, he graduated from the Harvard University Law School, and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar Association in 1871. By 1875 he was serving as Massachusetts Judge Advocate. In 1882 he was elected as a Democrat to represent Massachusetts 4th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives, becoming the first Irish Catholic to do so. He served three terms from 1883 to 1889, and declined to run for a fourth term. He returned to Boston to practice law, the was appointed by President Grover Cleveland to be United States Consul General in London, England. He served in that diplomatic role from 1893 to 1897. He returned once more to Boston, and was elected Mayor of the city in 1901. He would go on to serve from 1902 until his death in office in 1905. A monument stands to him in Boston on Commonwealth Avenue between Clarendon and Dartmouth Streets.

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Collins was born in Ballinfauna, near Fermoy in County Cork on
March 12, 1844. The story was told that the Irish national leader, Daniel O’Connell, prophesied upon seeing the baby that “one day he will be a great man.” After his father’s death during the Great Famine, Patrick and his mother joined the thousands bound for the United States and arrived in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in March of 1848 (from 1845-1852, approximately one million people died and a million more left Ireland). As a young immigrant in the Chelsea public schools, Collins experienced nativism first-hand. During a Know-Nothing disturbance in the 1850s, a rabble rouser called “Angel Gabriel” led a mob of several thousand to a Catholic church and tore the cross off the roof. In the ensuing weeks, nativists continued smashing the windows and doors of Catholic houses. Young Patrick was beaten and suffered a broken arm.