This is a transcription of the Octavia M. (Farnsworth) Collins biography from New Hampshire Women: A Collection of Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Daughters and Residents of the Granite State, Who are Worthy Representatives of their Sex in the Various Walks and Conditions of Life, The New Hampshire Publishing Co., Concord, NH, 1895, page 207.
Octavia M. (Farnsworth) Collins
OCTAVIA M. (FARNSWORTH) COLLINS, daughter of Cephas and Eunice Farnsworth, is a native of Androscoggin county, Me., where her father was early identified with the manufacturing interests of the community. She is of English ancestry, the seventh in direct descent from the Matthias Farnsworth who came to this country from Farnsworth, Kent county, England. The family is one of the oldest, the crest on the coat of arms indicating service under the Plantagenets. On the maternal side she is a descendant of Hugh and Bryce McLellan, of Portland and Gorham, Maine, representatives of an old Scotch family. To Sir Hugh McLellan of Argyle was given its coat of arms in 1645. The McLellans came to America from Londonderry, Ireland, about 1730, and became well known for their sterling integrity, enterprise, and thrift. Rev. Elijah Kellogg, a cousin of Mrs. Collins’s mother, has told their story in the “Struggles of my Grand-father for a Homestead.” She received a thorough education at private schools, in Norridgewock and Brunswick, Me., at Bates college and the Massachusetts Normal Art School, and was for years principal of a grammar school in the city of Worcester, Mass. Subsequently she was engaged in teaching for some time in Newton, Mass., meanwhile contributing to the columns of various educational publications. For the last fifteen years Mrs. Collins has been a resident of Franklin, and for seven years past, has been editor and manager of the Merrimack Journal newspaper, giving to the work a measure of industry, energy and intelligent enterprise seldom equalled in that line of effort; greatly improving the paper, and giving it a standing and circulation superior to most papers of the same rank in the state. She is the Franklin agent of the Associated Press, and she is an active member of the New England Woman’s Press Association. She has one son, Farnsworth, fourteen years of age, in whose education she is deeply interested.