62 - Judson Collins Grave - Chelsea, Michigan
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GT.US
N 42° 25.282 W 084° 04.873
16T E 740134 N 4700689
Site number 62 in the UMC Historic Sites is the grave of Judson Collins.
Waymark Code: WM5XG1
Location: Michigan, United States
Date Posted: 02/25/2009
Views: 16
The marker, Headstone, and mailbox with logbook and information are found in the Judson Collins Cemetery.
The Judson Collins Website at (
visit link) tells us:
"Reverend Judson Collins was born on February 12, 1823 and died on May 15, 1852 of a recurrent "wasting illness". He had no children and died at just 29 years of age shortly after his dramatic return from China. He was a man of many firsts. Rev. Judson Collins graduated from the first class at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and he was the first American Methodist Missionary to China. He was among the first faculty at Albion College in Albion, MI where he was a Professor of Natural and Moral Sciences! He is buried in the Collins family cemetery near Unidilla, Michigan close to his parents' beautifully restored home, which is under private ownership by a young and sympathetic family (see list below for details on location). He brought back seed pods from China of a beautiful and unique tree, at least one of which he planted in the front yard of the ancestral home next to the driveway. It is a relative of the Kentucky Coffee Tree and is the only other member of that tree species, gymnocladdus, in the world. It is a remarkable biological phenomenon to have these related trees come from such distant continents. Also, it is truly a unique circumstance for Judson Collins to have reunited China and America in this way! I wonder if he knew? There is a Judson Collins Methodist Camp located on the southern shore of Wamplers Lake adjoining the Walter J. Hayes State Park in SE lower Michigan (1000 Hane Highway, Onsted, MI 49265). This year round camp is about 20 miles South of the midpoint of a line between Jackson and Ann Arbor and just North of Adrian and Tecumseh. Judson came from a large family, which included two other Methodist missionaries and a settled Methodist minister of the Detroit Conference."