Amos S. Collins
Amos S. Collins was born on December 13, 1832, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. He moved to Iowa around 1852, and by 1860, he may have been working as a trapper in Algona, Iowa. He enlisted in the Union army on October 19, 1861, and mustered in as a private in the 16th Iowa Infantry. He eventually received a promotion to sergeant. As one friend later noted, he was “conspicuous for his gallantry at the battle of Shiloh, where he received a bullet in his right arm and one in his left thigh, both of which he carried to his grave.”
He returned to Iowa to recover, and he was mustered out in July 1862. That fall, in October 1862, he received a commission as a 1st lieutenant in Company I of the 32nd Iowa Infantry. Then, in October 1864, army officials transferred him to the 17th Veteran Reserve Corps.
Collins married Anna McCullough in Rock Island, Illinois, on October 17, 1862, and their daughter Mary was born around 1867. The family moved to Louisiana after the war, and Collins worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau. A friend later recalled that he was “determined to make his name in the South” and “entered zealously into the work of reconstruction.”
He established the Marksville Weekly Register in September 1868, but a white mob destroyed the press three months later. He moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, soon afterward and began publishing the Louisiana State Register. He applied for a federal pension in January 1872 and eventually secured one. In 1881, he secured a position in the Department of the Interior, but he died of a hemorrhage in Cincinnati, Ohio, on May 18, 1881, while en route to Washington, D.C.
DATABASE CONTENT
| (804) | Collins, Amos S. | 1832-12-13 | 1881-05-18 |
- Conflict Side: Union
- Role: Soldier
- Rank in: Private
- Rank out: 1st Lieutenant
- Rank highest: 1st Lieutenant
- Gender: Male
- Race: White
Documents - Records: 5
- (2778) [writer] ~ Amos S. Collins to Anna McCullough, 20 March 1862
- (2779) [writer] ~ Amos S. Collins to Anna McCullough, 11 December 1862
- (2780) [writer] ~ Amos S. Collins to Anna McCullough, 22 March 1864
- (2782) [writer] ~ Amos S. Collins to Anna McCullough, undated
- (2783) [writer] ~ Amos S. Collins to Anna McCullough, 23 March 1864
People - Records: 1
- (805) McCullough, Anna is the [wife of] (804) Collins, Amos S.
Places - Records: 2
Regiments - Records: 3
Groups - Records: 2
SOURCES
1860 and 1880 United States Federal Censuses, available from Ancestry.com; Illinois Compiled Marriages, 1851-1900, available from Ancestry.com; General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934, available from Ancestry.com; Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865, available from Ancestry.com; Chalmette National Cemetery Records, 1864-2003, available from Ancestry.com; Louisiana Wills and Probate Records, 1756-1984, available from Ancestry.com; Report of the Proceedings of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting (Cincinnati, OH: Society of the Army of the Tennessee, 1885).
