Colonial Despatches

Reverend William Claro Collins was an Anglican minister who spent much of his life serving as vicar of the two small neighbouring English parishes of Linstead Magna and Linstead Parva.1 Born in Middlesex near London, he was admitted to St. Bees College in 1858 and became a deacon in 1860.2 On 2 March 1861, he wrote to the Colonial Office on behalf of a parishioner looking for information regarding the fate of a deceased relative in California. The Colonial Office had nothing to share and referred Collins to William Lane Booker, British consul in San Francisco.3 Collins was sixty-one years old when he died in 1887.4

• 1. E. R. Kelly, ed., Kelly's Directory of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, 1883 (London: Kelly & Co., 1883), 961-962.
• 2. United Kingdom, The National Archives, RG11 General Register Office: 1881 Census Returns RG11/1893, 8; The Saint Bees College Calendar for the Year 1864 (London: J. & H. F. Rivington, 1864), 132; Ordinations, Ecclesiastical Gazette (London: Charles Cox, 1860), 253.
• 3. Collins to Colonial Office, 2 March 1861, 1918, CO 60/12. B616C02.html
• 4. United Kingdom, General Register Office Index, Deaths Registered in April, May, and June, 1887. Blything, vol. 4a, 497. http://www.freebmd.org.uk