She spent most of her life in Forge Village
By James Van Bever
Alice Luella Prescott Collins was born in Westford on December 2, 1886, she was the daughter of Nelson Levi and Ella M. Prescott. She had an older brother Victor who died at 19. Miss Prescott grew up in a brick-end colonial home in the Forge Village section of town on 25 Pine Street. The house was built in 1780 by her great-grand grandfather Captain Jonas Prescott.
Alice’s ancestor John Prescott came to America in 1640 and settled in Boston. His son Jonas, a captain in the French and Indian Wars, was a blacksmith who came to what is now known as Westford in 1680. Jonas constructed a sawmill on land that he purchased from “Andrew the Indian” at the opening of what is now known as Forge Pond. He later built a forge for “the manufacture of iron from the ore brought from Groton. This area eventually became known as Forge Village. Alice also was a distant relative of Revolutionary War hero Colonel John Robinson.
Growing up in Forge Village the young Prescott went to the two room Forge Village School which later became the Cameron School. Alice would always walk to school and recalled that on her way to class that she would stop and deliver milk to her neighbors.
While a student at the Forge Village school, Alice recalled how “an older boy would go down to the spring at the bottom of the hill by Stony Brook to get a pail of water.” Miss Prescott remembered that the bucket would sit near the teacher’s desk and the students would drink from it from a tin dipper.
After Miss Prescott graduated from the Forge Village school she entered Westford Academy in 1901 (now the Roudenbush Community Center) which at the time was still “shiny and new”. There being no buses in 1901, Alice rode her horse Yankee to school. Her father made arrangements to put Yankee in a nearby barn while she was in class. At noon, the young Prescott would go over to the barn and feed and water Yankee and then go back to the Academy. Alice recalled that “sometimes I didn’t have very much time for my own lunch. She would ride her horse home after school.
Alice Prescott graduated from Westford Academy in 1905. There were only seven students in her class, all of them girls. At the graduation exercise, Alice read two honor essays for her class entitled “The Rise of the Public Library in America” and “Dido and Cleopatra.”
Alice recalled that her family was not wealthy. She remembered that they “raised vegetables and lived off the land.” However, education was important to her parents, and they wanted their daughter to go to school and become a teacher. Alice recalled “that was their ambition, which was the one thing that was above other things.”
Accordingly, after Alice Prescott graduated from Westford Academy, she entered the Lowell Normal School which was the forerunner of the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Alice was able to take a train from Westford into Lowell and then walk up to the Lowell Normal campus.
Miss Prescott graduated from Lowell Normal in 1907. At the time, it was a two year program to become a teacher. Following her graduation from Lowell, Alice began her teaching career in Ashland, New Hampshire and Rowley, Massachusetts . She later became the principal at the grammar school in Rowley and later taught in New Rochelle, New York.
In August 1914, Alice married Frank Collins of Lawrence, Massachusetts. She met Frank through his father who was a superintendent at the Abbot Mills. Frank, who was a textile engineer, had graduated from the Lowell Textile Institute and the Rhode Island School of Design and was employed as an engineer. The couple were married at Alice’s home at 25 Pine Street.
After their marriage, the couple resided in Arlington, Massachusetts where Frank continued to work as a textile engineer. By the mid 1930’s, Alice and Frank would return to Westford and live in her home on Pine Street. Mr. Collins would continue his career in the textile industry.
Alice and Frank had one son, Raymond Prescott Collins. who was born in 1925. Raymond, who was a graduate of Lawrence Academy, Harvard College and the Harvard Medical School became a specialist in internal medicine. Dr. Collins practiced medicine in San Francisco, California.
Upon her return to Westford, Alice would work at the Officers Club at Fort Devens and later at the Bedford V.A. Hospital. She would also become active in the Westford Academy Alumni Association, the First Parish Church, and regent of the local Daughters of the American Revolution, Colonel John Robinson Chapter. Mrs. Collins would reside in her beautiful brick-end colonial home on Pine Street for most of the rest of her life.
Alice Prescott Collins died on October 24, 1984 at the Westford Nursing Home where she had resided for the past six years.
Sources:
“Matrimonial,” Lowell Sun, August 5, 1914, p. 38.
Ibid. “Frank Collins dies in Westford,” January 19, 1950, p. 4.
“Prescott Home-Forge Village,” Westford Eagle, August 21, 1980.
Ibid. “Alice Collins turns 96 tracing family to 1680”, Gordon B. Seavey, December 2, 1982, p. 2.
Ibid. “Founding family descendent Alice Collins, 97, passes away”, November 8, 1984, p. 5.
Ibid, “Old Schools Forge memories,” June W. Kennedy, April 28, 1988. P. 7.
Ibid. “School Days Recalled at Second Academy,” June W. Kennedy, September 15, 1988, p. 7.
Kennedy, June W. “Alice Louella Prescott Collings,” Westford Recollections, p. 37, 42.
Oliphant, Robert, “The Westford Gazetteer,” p. 165.
Westford Wardsman, December 5, 1908.
In 1900 Quincy Day took this photograph of Nelson Prescott’s barn at what is now 25 Pine
Street. Quincy wrote on the envelope, “Old barn west of Nelson Prescott’s house now owned by
Geo. Jackson.” Perhaps this was the barn Yankee called home when he wasn’t making the 2.3
mile trek to and from Westford Academy.